Plots and the view of them

Lately I was working on little plot of mine, and I got into thinking about plots and railroading and subjective views of it.

Let's say we have WWII scenario, and the players' characters, british soldiers, are thrown into little french village. The plot the GM has in mind is for the players to rescue some pretty farmer girl, keep the local mill safe and so on. In his mind the plot is "Save Little French Village In Middle of The War, And How Your Char Deals WIth It"

But the players in their minds think "WWII? We're going to stop the war, alter history and kill Hitler".

During the gameplay, it comes painfully obvious to the players that they cannot succeed in killing Hitler and ending the war, no matter what they do. And from their point of view, the plot IS railroaded. While the GM, from his point of view, has perfectly free plot *within the background*. For him, Hitler and War are background, not plot elements to change. Kind of like gravity, or everything revolving around the earth.

And of course, if Hitler couldn't be killed AT ALL, then it would be truly railroaded plot. But if some ordinary soldiers thrown to some hickey village in France cant end the war and kill Hitler...well, that's not real surprising, is it? UNLESS it is indeed miraculous plot about some farmboy and rascal going off to overthrow the evil empire.

So... both plots COULD work out, but if people are imagining different plots they are trying to achieve, then there will be a clash at some point, and possibly accusations of railroading and power-GMing (or being munchin and dilusional players).

What's my point? That the impression of railroading is quite subjective, and the impression of non-railroading is equally subjective. What is more important is to have common view of the plot and setting, which comes naturally in tabletop games, and is lot harder to do in open MMO enviroment.

That's about all my random thoughts about it. Any comments?

Blackdove

In a Deadlands tabletop game I play, our group encountered one of the main bad-guys in the entire setting. Normally, in the rulebooks, this character is unkillable. However, our GM decided this was unfair to the players, and instead, statted him with high dice-rolls etc.

So, we fought him, and only just survived. He got away, but at least our GM gave us the chance to fight him, rather than be tyrannical with the setting, and say "No, you can't do that, it breaks the meta-plot".

For me, that's how a GM is supposed to be like. Their players will always find a way to break the game, and it's up to *them* to adapt to this new scenario, not force a situation on the players, when in common-sense terms, they could avoid it.

Yes, exactly. Your group had a consensus on what kind of play you want, and the GM and the players were on the same page. And, apparently, you did have IC fighting chance?

Yet, if for example GM would have regarded your characters as common runts, and Big Bad a planetstomper, encounter with him would've ended only one way (at least in the style of "make mistake and pay for it, dearly" - RP). If players saw the situation differently, upset ensues. Even if it was players who thought their chars are runts and realistically should have been killed, and it's the GM who gives them some slack and adjusts the odds a little and chars survive... THAT can ruin the immersion for the player too, and give image of another kind of "railroad" GM: The kind where the the chars get away with everything.

I believe we have very fundamental difference in what we enjoy in RP. I suppose you'd see my preferences tyrannical, and I'd see yours carebear. Even so, different styles can be matched together, but only when it's understood there IS difference.

I suppose it comes down to what is seen as railroading, (or good GMing). Personally, I don't see it railroading if there is events and plots my character cant affect, due to IC reasons. If it's clearly OOC reason, "I take this big heavy chair that wasn't nailed to floor earlier and throw it through that window and break the window" "it doesn't break the window." THAT would make me discuss with the GM. But if my char would meet the Big Bad that the lore says is unbeatable and eats better fighters than my char for breakfast... then if my char was stupid enough to try fight the Big Bad, then I'd fully expect to roll a new one.

And even so, it is still matter of perception. You met "Unkillable" NPC...and you didn't kill him. So, lore stays unbroken, and MAYBE you never had a chance to kill him anyway, there was just illusion of it. Or my char meets Big Bad, and gets away with it miraculously, and I could go on believing it was actually miraculous, not my GM smoothing the way. IMO, the GM needs to allow players to BELIEVE they have chance to affect things, and that there is very possible chance of losing and your char dying. How accurate that belief is, isn't really that important to me, as long as it is there. If railroading without me noticing makes a better story, well, that's better story and my immersion stays intact, yay.

Blackdove

Often it's like grinding, it's not grinding/railroading if it's fun.

Players want to kill Hitler? Fine, I can have him arise again as a Zombie, Goeballs take over, have history alter, have them assassinate a double. That's the sign of a good plot.

Players WILL run roughshod over any plot you have unless you sweeten it all the way with rewards. They don't have to mean much but freedom of choice is just a reward as well.

Railroading IS necessary at times, but just don't let the players catch on you're doing it.

If the players really want to blow up the world, let them, then present them with the bill

From your plot

First of all, the players are meta-gaming because they shouldn't know that much about Hitler (as the British forces really didn't) [Hence the Enigma machine being such a great find].
Secondly, given the problems spotted in 'The Great Excape' it would be easy to stop the players without being heavy handed.
Thirdly, where's the personality to the village? Why isn't there a girlfriend of one of the Soldiers who's told him she's pregnant? Maybe the mill contains Jewish Ex-Nasi Soldiers who have news on the Concentration camps? Maybe Rommel needs the village to stay open so the Frontline can be fed?

It's railroading, but it's effective and non-invasive. If you don't want the players to leave, don't just say no, say 'How much are you willing to lose?'.

[edit; Ooh thought of worse Players kill Hitler and he becomes a martyr to the German people, they launch an early strike against Great Britain; catch Churchill off guard and land in London with their newest P.O.W's, the players. Through some miracle of fate, they escape to the countryside and hold up in a small farm with a mill...repeat game ]

As an example, this was from a game I played in.

We were hired to kill off this accountant who was making his way through the sewers with an obscene amount of money.
I spotted the guy first, realised it wasn't who we thought it was and legged it. The other's opened up on him.
The 'accountant' turned out to be a hired killer who beat the stuffing out of the team, but through a combination of obscene dicerolls and firepower they took him out.

Licking their wounds they returned to the base, and I crawled back out to try and meet them. I opened the door to their house and found their bodies hung from the ceiling rafters. Obviously the person who hired the killer wasn't pleased and sent in a large body of thugs to decimate them.

I ran for my life and kept running.

Overall, team wipe, despite being 'successful', but you know, we still had fun and later learnt the hired killer was an 'unkillable', but we'd got very lucky. Didn't really change the scenario, (we knew it was a suicide mission when we started the game), but the feeling of freedom was still there.

Ah, sorry, my real plot wasn't anything to do with Hitler or WWII; it was just example to exxaggarate the issue. (And to use Hitler-card myself )

(( I Just got up, now to get some breakfast... ))

Blackdove

Kinda reminds me a little of my very first tabletopping experience, just the other day in fact. We were playing Fading Suns and our three characters were on a space transport, about 3 weeks from planetfall. Through various events we ended up in a situation where the ship was basically full of zombies! We had in our team an engineer and her small child, a bodyguard, and me, a thief.

The zombies were coming and the bodyguard, our only melee fighter, was taking her sweet time getting her body armour on. As my blaster pistol wasn't too effective, I had her huge stun sword to try to hold them off.. Yeah... Me with a melee of 3...

Zombies got too close so I roll for strength (7) plus melee (3). I need a 10, I get a 20.. Oh dear, that's a critical fail!

By rights, I should have been zombie brunch, but instead the sword got stuck in the zombie and it shambled off, and I learned just how fast my character could actually run! I didn't even have my energy shield on as I'd given it to the engineer's kid!

The bodyguard, the owner of the sword, spent the rest of the session bleating on about her sword and giving me the evil eye! Zombie brunch might have been preferable!

So, our GM decided to take pity on us, especially me. He could easily have wiped the lot of us at that point but didn't. In the end we managed to escape and the campaign continued a bit.. Before ending on a cliffhanger! Possibly that was his intent all along, so maybe it could be seen as railroaded, but I certainly don't consider it and I had a LOT of fun!

I really can't wait for session 2!

RE: Blackdove

Don't worry, there wasn't any carebearing going on. We were just given a chance, and to be honest, the only reason we survived was through pure luck. We barely even dented the big-bad-guy.

(Although, as all party members survived, a deal I made with Zortel means I have to make my character gain 1 point in Religious Faith )

The only problem with managing to kill a big bad is if they DO kill it, it screws up your plot, EG, i have a story where a Daemon Prince of Tzeentch is going to coerce the ruling class of the empire into working for him, but the players DO see him before the ministers radical thought change (just their little clue, really). Instead, the Archer with initiative that should be illegal snipes him... and kills him in 1 shot... Goodbye 3 weeks work! (boo hoo...)

But thats the whole challenge! So you instead you let the players find out that wasnt the REAL daemon prince, and now he has finished his evil summoning ritual and has summoned his freinds to take vengeance on the palyers for killing his mate

Or.... the Demon Prince snatches the arrow out of the air and glares at them...

Or... The Arrow slams into his heart and he says "My dear, I lost that years ago."

Or... They don't manage to make it from the book-depository before Law Officer Ruby locks them up.

Many different views

Yes but i am one of those EVIL GMs who likes to punish players for their actions *cue maniacal laughter*

[ QUOTE ]
So... both plots COULD work out, but if people are imagining different plots they are trying to achieve, then there will be a clash at some point, and possibly accusations of railroading and power-GMing (or being munchin and dilusional players).

What's my point? That the impression of railroading is quite subjective, and the impression of non-railroading is equally subjective. What is more important is to have common view of the plot and setting, which comes naturally in tabletop games, and is lot harder to do in open MMO enviroment.

[/ QUOTE ]

I believe railroading comes from the conflict between players views about their abilities to influence the plot, their environnement and what the GM will allow them to do.

The more the players are supposed to be "able to", the more you can fall into railroading.

Most probably, it comes from a misunderstanding at first.
If you allow players to create world-shakers to finally prevent them to shake their world, they will resent it as railroading.
It can of course also happen at "lower levels of influence". It's just generally easier to avoid giving the impression of railroading if players themselves don't expect to be able to do a lot of things out of what the GM is proposing.

What defines railroading is also subjective. Some elements are plot or setting elements, not destined to be modified, influenced, just adding flavor to the game.
When a player could consider doable to kill Hitler, it's probable that noone would consider removing the sun from the sky. When, actually, the sun or Hitler are just background elements, not different.
Players would accept they cannot remove the sun from the sky but wouldn't accept they can't kill Hitler by themselves.
Here, it is their perception of what can or cannot be done which can create a problem.
And such perception can come from an unclear start from the GM. If the GM starts its game letting players consider themselves supersoldiers able to do anything, stopping Tiger tanks with makeshift bombs and shooting at columns of clueless german soldiers who should know better...
On the other hand, if the GM gives a gritty feel to the game before it starts, the players would probably be happy enough aiming at survival...

It's then, to me, more a "setting" conflict. "Setting" of the adventure, scenario, campaign, its theme, its content.

Now, railroading can also comes, in tabletop games, from inexperienced GM, GM who are a bit lost following players actions and relying on the "GM power" to ...well... put them back on tracks.
In other words... know your GM, his or her style. It helps.

Knights of The Dinner Table, often touched on this in the players, completely justifiably, saw every NPC as a walking mound of XP.

The trick of the GM is to understand his players and give them what they all want; whilst not annoying himself.

If they want to assassinate Hitler, They're gonna be Superheroes of somesort, so you twist the world to recognised them. (See The Great Escape, especially as you don't have to let all of them live....)

If you want them to protect the farmyard, give them multiple reasons to protect it, and don't stop piling on the pressure. (Dog Soldiers,Saving Private Ryan)

Even with the same characters, Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back are vastly different settings. The original speaks of Hope, the sequel is Fear.

My two cents...

Pretty much what Weasel and Max said. A good GM plays to accomodate the players at his/her table, without it becoming a drag for him/her. I have seen a fair few GM's in my time, and I have been one on occasion. The styles ranged from GM's playing mostly to amuse themselves regardless of player wishes to GM's who did everything to make their players happy. Personally, I like to meet in the middle. If players do incredibly stupid things, they should expect to die (I recently took that risk myself in LARP). If they however play it smart, they needn't die necessarily, it will depend on their actions.

Roleplay is very much a 'on the moment/spot' kind of game. The best advice I could give as a GM, is prepare for no -one- outcome. Always expect your players to be smarter than you and don't make up your mind on what you want the outcome to be. If you allow free player action, you'd be amazed at what your players can do. :-)

No plan ever surives contact with the players.