My gut reaction, is that the hypothetical DM did a good job of thinking on his feet, he doesn't have to rewrite his plot hook, and the player didn't have to participate in the gladiator match, so he feels like his actions affected the story. The DM rolls with the punches, and says the quest giver was impressed with his skills, and offers him a high paying job. The rogue throws a wrench in this plan, however, when he successfully escapes his chains before the fighting begins. Let's say the DM wants to start his campaign with the PCs as gladiators, and are freed by the quest giver, under the condition that they fulfill his request. So then regardless of what the players do, they end up talking to this one npc.Įven examples that strike me as pretty good DMing, and adaptability could be considered railroading. Isn't that kind of the same thing though? If you come to the table knowing that there's an informant who can tell the party about the king's shady advisor, you're going to find a way to bring the party to him. A lot of improv-focused DMs will just come to the table with a general idea of where they want the story to end up. If that's all there is too it though, then a lot of other common practices could comfortable fit under the umbrella of "railroading".
So then, is Schrodinger's Dungeon just another form of railroading? That kind of makes sense, is you prepare one ogre fight, and regardless of where the players go or what they try to do, they encounter the ogre, then regardless of what they do, the result is the same. Regardless of what the players do, the end result is the same. Most people are pretty comfortable condemning railroading as bad practice, because it takes away the player's ability to influence the game world.
With all that out of the way, I can get to my main point, which is I have no idea how to handle the Schrodinger's Dungeon problem, and the more I think about it, the more the entire genre as a whole starts to fall apart. And if you aren't making a choice, you can't make the choice your character would have. If you reach a fork in the road, in a sense you're faced with the choice between going left and going right, but if you have no way of knowing what you're choosing between, you aren't making a choice.
The most fundamental property of an rpg that I can think of is that the players make decisions as these fictional characters, rather than themselves. In the hypercube example, the PCs were deciding between arbitrary doors, with no possible way to make an informed decision. One other issue that arises from that specific example is that a blind choice isn't a choice. The post continued about how the players lved it, because it felt like they had total freedom to explore hundreds of rooms the catch was that the DM only prepared 6 rooms, and regardless of which direction the party went, they found the next room the DM had prepared.įrom what I can tell general opinion on this practice is pretty mixed, some people think it's a great way for a DM to cut down on prep time, others hate it, saying it robs the players of any agency, and others consider it acceptable, so long as the illusion is never broken, and the players never find out. I first heard about the idea from a post about a guy who prepared a 4-dimmensional hypercube dungeon, where each room had a different exit in each direction. Before I get into that, I need to talk a little about Schrodinger's Dungeon.īasically, the idea is that the DM prepares a few rooms, or encounters, or pieces of treasure, and uses them as the need arises, without deciding beforehand on the order or location. THIS IS SO FREAKY BECAUSE IT ACTUALLY works.I've been thinking a lot recently about the consequences of player actions, and what counts as railroading. WHEN YOURE DONE PRESS F6 AND YOUR CRUSHS NAME WILL APPEAR IN BIG LETTERS ON THE SCREEN. But if you read this and do not paste this, then you will have very bad luck. If you do this, your crush will kiss you on the nearest Friday. See More See More See More See More See More See More See More See More See More See More See More See More See More See More See More See More See More See More See More See More See more See More See More See More See More See More See More See More See More See More See More See More See more See More See More See more See more See more See more See more See More See more See More See More See More See More See More See More See More See More See more See More 3. YOU WILL BE KISSED ON THE NEAREST POSSIBLE FRIDAY BY THE LOVE OF YOUR LIFE.TOMMOROW WILL BE THE BEST DAY OF YOUR LIFE.