[Gaming] RPG as Movie Experience -- Illusionism in Action
This is my discussion of something called "illusionism," closely associated with "railroading," and how some gamers just want to be told a story.
If you haven't yet listened to Theory from the Closet #44: Interview with Mike Mearls, you should. This is a really well-crafted interview with the lead developer of D&D 4th Edition.
My favorite part of it is Mike's take on a little thing that I and other theory twunts call illusionism. All that word means is that the GM has a particular story she wants to tell and she pushes the player characters through it, and the players' choices don't in general stop the GM from telling that story. In some cases, the players know they're being railroaded and don't care; we call this participationism, meaning that the players participate in the illusion with a wink and a nod.
Mike's take is that the casual gamer--especially the casual D&D player--just wants to be entertained. The casual player wants the GM to tell him a story. That's fun. What ruins that fun? Stopping the storytelling to ask the audience, "Okay, now what happens? What's the bad guy's motivation? What's the real sinister secret of Saltmarsh?"
Imagine you're at the movie theater. You're seeing Bladerunner II: Replicated. The movie starts out great! Tyrell Corporation's thugs are chasing Deckard, who has returned to L.A. for some reason. They capture him and take him to the 380th floor of some sinister building. Zoom in on the face of the young, greedy suit-type. "Why did you do it, Deckard?" Do what? You're really into this story. You're gripped. The camera cuts to Deckard's face. His eyes squint. You're on the edge of your seat.
Then the movie stops. Ridley Scott appears on screen and addresses you personally, "What did Deckard do?" You answer and Scott asks you, "Go ahead, describe that. We'll do a flashback and show it."
Hey, that crazy-SF-future interactive movie experience could happen someday, maybe, but most folks don't want that kind of pressure when they go to the movies. They go to be entertained. My reaction might be, "Gee, Ridley, you're the director with the fucking Emmy. Why don't you tell me what happens. You have my $10."
Here is where I admit something of which I am a bit ashamed. For a while now, I have believed that "entertain me" players -- people who don't want to participate in the story creation process -- are lazy. It's a foolish value judgment and I can see it as that now. In part, I got caught up in my own gaming preferences, which are far from "casual," and started projecting all kinds of unpleasant things onto people who don't share those preferences. If I have ever treated you badly as a result, I apologize.
Obviously, people play games for different reasons. I am not interested in being the sole storyteller when I run games. I want to share that work -- that burden, that responsibility, that difficulty -- with the other people at the table. I want to create something together, not create a cool story all on my own and then show it to you like you're eating popcorn in front of a big screen. I want to share the creation process with you. But that's my thing, that's what excites my neurons. Your thing might be totally different and who the fuck am I to tell you it is lazy or boring or uncool. Maybe boring to me, but that's different than a universal value judgment. Five players sitting around a table getting told a story by a GM is a fine thing, as long as they're all having fun.
So let me back the hell off this a bit, because it never really plays out that way. It's not like those five players have to keep quiet for two hours until the GM finishes the story. They have a part to play, too. Players always have a part to play, or we'd call them Watchers or something. But what is it?
Pretty much everyone agrees that there is this thing called railroading. The GM basically uses various kinds of force to make the story go a certain way. It's not always a bad thing, like in the case of participationism. What isn't always clear is where you draw the line. The GM has input. The players have input. The GM can ignore the players' input. The players can ignore the GM's input. Somehow, people manage to agree on shit and tell a story.
Game rules often explicitly draw lines about authority over different parts of the story. Like, the players control the actions of their characters, and the GM controls everything else in the world. It's never really that simple though. The vampire uses his mind-control power and forces your rogue to stab the paladin in the neck. Totally by the rules. So there are often exceptions that grant authority in all kinds of weird ways and we muddle through it.
Somewhere in the social contract of gaming, the players generally understand what they're gonna get out of the four, six, eight hours they spend rolling dice around Bob's dining room table. There's an implicit understanding that they will get to make some meaningful choices. Meaningful choices: That's what role-playing gaming is about. Without meaningful choices, there can still be role-playing but only within the narrow confines of an existing story. Your role-playing won't change anything. You can't woo the prince, kill the goblin king, or finally unlock the secrets of the thousand towers. The GM can tell a story about you doing those things, but it's not really your accomplishment unless you made meaningful choices to get there.
Choices are things like what you say in character and out of character, which of your character's skills and powers you use and when, and whether you roll the dice or not in any given situation. None of those things are meaningful without game context. For a thing to be meaningful, it has to matter to you and the friends you play with. What matters? All kinds of stuff, and it might differ among players. You just want your rogue to survive this damned battle with the vampire. The GM wants to show off his cool NPC and introduce the sweet underworld culture he developed for two weeks. Bob is itching to use that new power he gained at 8th level and he wants to kick some monster ass.
"Meaningful" also suggests you might not get what you want. You have to be able to fail.
Ever wonder why games have dice in them? Meaningful choice. To introduce randomness so that your success is never guaranteed. Sure, you could just let the GM decide, but then you're at her whim to be fair, and now you're not sure if your choices were meaningful or not. Maybe the GM is just railroading you. She said your clever repartee just failed to woo the prince, but maybe she just wants the story to come out a certain way. Maybe it didn't matter if you said anything at all.
Sure, there are other clever ways to ensure meaningful choice without dice, but dice are easy.
Illusionism is the illusion of meaningful choice where railroading occurs. The GM rolls her dice behind a big screen. Sometimes she fudges the results. That last encounter was too easy, so she added two more goblins. Wasn't it exciting though?! And this encounter was too hard, so she fudged a bit there, too. She reduced the vampire's hit points a lot mid-fight, and she "forgot" to use his mind-control power last round. Earlier, when you tried to woo the prince, you rolled really well. The GM just said that he was in love with your character, but he had no information that could help you. Little do you know that the GM panicked a bit because the whole story would have come tumbling down, so she made this previously-important prince a pawn in the story, and shifted all the important information over to his sister, the beautiful princess. The GM is smart and clever, too, so she is careful to drop hints in her dialog with you and the other players that guide you this way and that. You've learned over years of playing with her that, if you jump on a certain kind of clue, you'll succeed most of the time, but if you ignore them, bad things happen (or the adventure is boring).
Sounds pretty bad that way, right? Evil GM is a mastermind-manipulator. How can you possibly have fun?
1. Well, maybe you like being manipulated and having all your input nullified, but probably not.
2. Maybe you don't know it's happening. If you did know, you'd be pretty annoyed. This is illusionism.
3. More likely, you know it's happening and don't care. You're all in this for fun. You know the GM fudges things to make the game more fun. You trust her judgment. This is participationism.
Most likely, even if you're playing in a participationist style, you have tons of input. The GM only ignores it when it totally gets in the way of her story. Great railroad-GMs are like the best wide receivers, tucking the ball of intent under one arm and weaving and dodging player-tacklers as they drive toward the end zone of their story. But not everything you do is a tackle. You can do a lot of stuff that is meaningful to you that doesn't stop the GM from telling the story she wants to tell.
Case in point: my last D&D game. I warned the players I was going to railroad the fuck out of the first part of the game. I felt it necessary to start the kind of game they had requested, with huge epic plot stuff. It's hard for a GM to plot out epic storylines without forcing the PCs into that story somehow.
The players got captured. They could have fought, but I'd stacked the battle against them. The 7th level eladrin fey knight would have cleaned them up. None of their choices were meaningful, at least regarding capture. But everyone got to show how their character would act when confronted with royal authority. Some considered fighting. Some parleyed. One hid in the bushes. Another waited too long then tried to hide in the bushes and tripped and fell. One waited to see what everyone else was doing first. Those were meaningful things, in terms of character definition.
Then the players stood trial. It was stacked against them. They went through a lengthy skill challenge, won it, and then lost the trial anyway. I totally railroaded them. None of their choices were meaningful, at least regarding winning the trial. kimbyrle said that she got to make a cool speech at the end and that made it all worth it. That was meaningful for her. Some of the players were annoyed or at least confused. I probably should have just told them a story about their characters--backstory about a trial they won but they ended up convicted anyway--and let them react to that. Why give them lots of choices that aren't meaningful?
I think it's pretty important to have an understanding with your play group about the level of cheating and railroading that will occur. Is the end story the most important thing? If I fudge the rules a bit to keep this character or that character alive, is that okay? Cuz I would have let kimbyrle's character die (till we discoverd she'd computed hit points all wrong), but I let godessdiana's character live through the night till the party could rescue her, even though she ought to have bled to death according to the rules, as I understand them. Was that fair? Probably not.
I am pretty sure my friends don't want me to stop constantly and ask them stuff about the setting and plot. They want to discover it, to watch it unfold, like a movie. They want to influence it with their input. They want to "drive" their characters through it and, even if their input isn't always steering the plot itself, they want to feel like they are steering the choices of their characters.
If you haven't yet listened to Theory from the Closet #44: Interview with Mike Mearls, you should. This is a really well-crafted interview with the lead developer of D&D 4th Edition.
My favorite part of it is Mike's take on a little thing that I and other theory twunts call illusionism. All that word means is that the GM has a particular story she wants to tell and she pushes the player characters through it, and the players' choices don't in general stop the GM from telling that story. In some cases, the players know they're being railroaded and don't care; we call this participationism, meaning that the players participate in the illusion with a wink and a nod.
Mike's take is that the casual gamer--especially the casual D&D player--just wants to be entertained. The casual player wants the GM to tell him a story. That's fun. What ruins that fun? Stopping the storytelling to ask the audience, "Okay, now what happens? What's the bad guy's motivation? What's the real sinister secret of Saltmarsh?"
Imagine you're at the movie theater. You're seeing Bladerunner II: Replicated. The movie starts out great! Tyrell Corporation's thugs are chasing Deckard, who has returned to L.A. for some reason. They capture him and take him to the 380th floor of some sinister building. Zoom in on the face of the young, greedy suit-type. "Why did you do it, Deckard?" Do what? You're really into this story. You're gripped. The camera cuts to Deckard's face. His eyes squint. You're on the edge of your seat.
Then the movie stops. Ridley Scott appears on screen and addresses you personally, "What did Deckard do?" You answer and Scott asks you, "Go ahead, describe that. We'll do a flashback and show it."
Hey, that crazy-SF-future interactive movie experience could happen someday, maybe, but most folks don't want that kind of pressure when they go to the movies. They go to be entertained. My reaction might be, "Gee, Ridley, you're the director with the fucking Emmy. Why don't you tell me what happens. You have my $10."
Here is where I admit something of which I am a bit ashamed. For a while now, I have believed that "entertain me" players -- people who don't want to participate in the story creation process -- are lazy. It's a foolish value judgment and I can see it as that now. In part, I got caught up in my own gaming preferences, which are far from "casual," and started projecting all kinds of unpleasant things onto people who don't share those preferences. If I have ever treated you badly as a result, I apologize.
Obviously, people play games for different reasons. I am not interested in being the sole storyteller when I run games. I want to share that work -- that burden, that responsibility, that difficulty -- with the other people at the table. I want to create something together, not create a cool story all on my own and then show it to you like you're eating popcorn in front of a big screen. I want to share the creation process with you. But that's my thing, that's what excites my neurons. Your thing might be totally different and who the fuck am I to tell you it is lazy or boring or uncool. Maybe boring to me, but that's different than a universal value judgment. Five players sitting around a table getting told a story by a GM is a fine thing, as long as they're all having fun.
So let me back the hell off this a bit, because it never really plays out that way. It's not like those five players have to keep quiet for two hours until the GM finishes the story. They have a part to play, too. Players always have a part to play, or we'd call them Watchers or something. But what is it?
Pretty much everyone agrees that there is this thing called railroading. The GM basically uses various kinds of force to make the story go a certain way. It's not always a bad thing, like in the case of participationism. What isn't always clear is where you draw the line. The GM has input. The players have input. The GM can ignore the players' input. The players can ignore the GM's input. Somehow, people manage to agree on shit and tell a story.
Game rules often explicitly draw lines about authority over different parts of the story. Like, the players control the actions of their characters, and the GM controls everything else in the world. It's never really that simple though. The vampire uses his mind-control power and forces your rogue to stab the paladin in the neck. Totally by the rules. So there are often exceptions that grant authority in all kinds of weird ways and we muddle through it.
Somewhere in the social contract of gaming, the players generally understand what they're gonna get out of the four, six, eight hours they spend rolling dice around Bob's dining room table. There's an implicit understanding that they will get to make some meaningful choices. Meaningful choices: That's what role-playing gaming is about. Without meaningful choices, there can still be role-playing but only within the narrow confines of an existing story. Your role-playing won't change anything. You can't woo the prince, kill the goblin king, or finally unlock the secrets of the thousand towers. The GM can tell a story about you doing those things, but it's not really your accomplishment unless you made meaningful choices to get there.
Choices are things like what you say in character and out of character, which of your character's skills and powers you use and when, and whether you roll the dice or not in any given situation. None of those things are meaningful without game context. For a thing to be meaningful, it has to matter to you and the friends you play with. What matters? All kinds of stuff, and it might differ among players. You just want your rogue to survive this damned battle with the vampire. The GM wants to show off his cool NPC and introduce the sweet underworld culture he developed for two weeks. Bob is itching to use that new power he gained at 8th level and he wants to kick some monster ass.
"Meaningful" also suggests you might not get what you want. You have to be able to fail.
Ever wonder why games have dice in them? Meaningful choice. To introduce randomness so that your success is never guaranteed. Sure, you could just let the GM decide, but then you're at her whim to be fair, and now you're not sure if your choices were meaningful or not. Maybe the GM is just railroading you. She said your clever repartee just failed to woo the prince, but maybe she just wants the story to come out a certain way. Maybe it didn't matter if you said anything at all.
Sure, there are other clever ways to ensure meaningful choice without dice, but dice are easy.
Illusionism is the illusion of meaningful choice where railroading occurs. The GM rolls her dice behind a big screen. Sometimes she fudges the results. That last encounter was too easy, so she added two more goblins. Wasn't it exciting though?! And this encounter was too hard, so she fudged a bit there, too. She reduced the vampire's hit points a lot mid-fight, and she "forgot" to use his mind-control power last round. Earlier, when you tried to woo the prince, you rolled really well. The GM just said that he was in love with your character, but he had no information that could help you. Little do you know that the GM panicked a bit because the whole story would have come tumbling down, so she made this previously-important prince a pawn in the story, and shifted all the important information over to his sister, the beautiful princess. The GM is smart and clever, too, so she is careful to drop hints in her dialog with you and the other players that guide you this way and that. You've learned over years of playing with her that, if you jump on a certain kind of clue, you'll succeed most of the time, but if you ignore them, bad things happen (or the adventure is boring).
Sounds pretty bad that way, right? Evil GM is a mastermind-manipulator. How can you possibly have fun?
1. Well, maybe you like being manipulated and having all your input nullified, but probably not.
2. Maybe you don't know it's happening. If you did know, you'd be pretty annoyed. This is illusionism.
3. More likely, you know it's happening and don't care. You're all in this for fun. You know the GM fudges things to make the game more fun. You trust her judgment. This is participationism.
Most likely, even if you're playing in a participationist style, you have tons of input. The GM only ignores it when it totally gets in the way of her story. Great railroad-GMs are like the best wide receivers, tucking the ball of intent under one arm and weaving and dodging player-tacklers as they drive toward the end zone of their story. But not everything you do is a tackle. You can do a lot of stuff that is meaningful to you that doesn't stop the GM from telling the story she wants to tell.
Case in point: my last D&D game. I warned the players I was going to railroad the fuck out of the first part of the game. I felt it necessary to start the kind of game they had requested, with huge epic plot stuff. It's hard for a GM to plot out epic storylines without forcing the PCs into that story somehow.
The players got captured. They could have fought, but I'd stacked the battle against them. The 7th level eladrin fey knight would have cleaned them up. None of their choices were meaningful, at least regarding capture. But everyone got to show how their character would act when confronted with royal authority. Some considered fighting. Some parleyed. One hid in the bushes. Another waited too long then tried to hide in the bushes and tripped and fell. One waited to see what everyone else was doing first. Those were meaningful things, in terms of character definition.
Then the players stood trial. It was stacked against them. They went through a lengthy skill challenge, won it, and then lost the trial anyway. I totally railroaded them. None of their choices were meaningful, at least regarding winning the trial. kimbyrle said that she got to make a cool speech at the end and that made it all worth it. That was meaningful for her. Some of the players were annoyed or at least confused. I probably should have just told them a story about their characters--backstory about a trial they won but they ended up convicted anyway--and let them react to that. Why give them lots of choices that aren't meaningful?
I think it's pretty important to have an understanding with your play group about the level of cheating and railroading that will occur. Is the end story the most important thing? If I fudge the rules a bit to keep this character or that character alive, is that okay? Cuz I would have let kimbyrle's character die (till we discoverd she'd computed hit points all wrong), but I let godessdiana's character live through the night till the party could rescue her, even though she ought to have bled to death according to the rules, as I understand them. Was that fair? Probably not.
I am pretty sure my friends don't want me to stop constantly and ask them stuff about the setting and plot. They want to discover it, to watch it unfold, like a movie. They want to influence it with their input. They want to "drive" their characters through it and, even if their input isn't always steering the plot itself, they want to feel like they are steering the choices of their characters.