Recent content by Celebrim

I not only have GM fiat at the heart of my definition, but since I don't really judge railroading on the basis of "good/bad", my definition is probably more expansive than yours. Any GM fiat which wasn't justified prior to play as part of an honest analysis of what the "reality" of the setting...

Yes, but perhaps potentially very minor. A lot of railroading for me depends on the why of what you are doing. To me the real issue is whether the justification for planar lock is based on the internal logic of the setting or whether it is based on the desires of the GM for how he wants the...

Mine as well. I can even name the technique being used under my scheme: obdurium walls. It's when in order to confine the players to the area or problem the GM desires or to force the players not to use some simple solution, he creates an impassable barrier. It's not necessarily a bad...

That's really about the limit of when you can make play be character driven rather than party driven. I fully agree with one player and one GM, the player's character can uniquely drive the game and every situation can be tailored to the character. The more players you add the more varying...

How many players are normally at your tables?

The problem is that it's quite possible to use a term without having any idea what you mean by the term much less having a conscious definition for it. A lot of people have loose definitions along the lines of "I know it when I see it" which makes the meaning of the term wholly subjective to...

I should note that with this group when I did a Session Minus One with them, I gave them a questionnaire about their gaming preferences and experience and one of the questions I gave then was choose what playstyle they wanted - an open world where they make their own stories or a linear...

It means that applying techniques like small world, obdurium walls, false choices, or Schrodinger's maps can be justified if the GM is doing so because it's impossible to prep a fully open world with infinite choices and also have real granularity about it. For example, in my own campaign right...

As a player, it's what I would consider railroading if I did it as a GM. It's a collection of techniques that are used to limit and guide player choice. How I respond to that depends on how subtle it is, what I perceive the reasoning to be, how often it happens, and whether the GM becomes...

"The Expanse" was a campaign before it was a series of novels/TV show as well.

Yes, I am aware with that. I still stand by my explanation.

I don't find the two are incompatible. I can verify the players are engaged when they remanence about prior sessions, and it's sounds like people recounting a TV show or movie they enjoyed, complete with quoting what characters said. It would be congruent to what I said the point of the game...

I get it, but just like back in the 1980s, I find that "well, what makes sense" in practice involves playing to the referee or the table or the meta rather than to the fiction. I had no problem whatsoever with scary dungeon crawls in 3e D&D and while I have famously or infamously got a lot of...

Nostalgia. I love capturing the vibe of the game back when I was a kid and everything about RPGs felt magical and cool. That's why I often find myself designing OSR style house rules and revisions and even scenarios for 1e AD&D... even though I have absolutely no intention of ever running a...

Yeah, I don't if I'm weird or not, but my goal is always something like, "If this was a television show, would people be entertained by it?" Or insert "novel" or "movie" or whatever media you think that your game is adaptable too. One of the things that has always bugged me is that while...