Is it bad GMing to have the player's choice be retroactively wrong?
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Is it bad GMing to have the player's choice be retroactively wrong?
Is it bad GMing to have the player's choice be retroactively wrong?
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Yes
Spineless homosexuals. What kind of baby mode bullshit do you want to play where all consequences of every decision are immediately apparent?
What do you think retroactive means?
Unless the player is making a completely blind decision (IE: The players come across two foreign armies clashing, whichever they join are the sympathetic defenders), then yes, you're invalidating their investment and agency because the player is learning about and engaging with your world and game to make those decisions and rug-pulling them is fricking gay.
spbp
What you posted is standard DMing. Anyone who says otherwise has never run a game. These are the same morons who will say "improv everything" and then get butthurt when they're not able to immediately kill the BBEG in session 2.
By having a quantum ogre like you just posted, the story can continue regardless of what the players choose. It is functionally identical to improv, in that you are just improvising the next conflict based on the actions/choices of the players. This is the only way to run a game with a coherent story.
>The only way to storyshit
well you're not wrong
>storyshit
There's that word again. I'm sorry you can't find players for your oh so exciting game of wander around a nameless cave and slay random monsters every week.
Twice a week, actually, but thanks for your concerns.
And I like to think my games have a coherent story, it's just retroactive. Storyshitting isn't 'having characters with motivations and interesting things being roleplayed.'
Storyshitting is this 'the players actions don't matter because the GM will just twist it anyway,' shit. They're putting in the work to learn about your world and act upon it, the least you can do is let them actually change things. But no the story the GM wants to 'tell,' is more important than the game.
They ARE changing it, did you not read the fricking OP you smoothbrained moron? They are changing it to plotline B, which is different from plotline A. This is agency par excellence, since it allows the conflict to continue while the players have control over the course of the story.
How can there be any agency if nothing was decided until the players did something about it? No information they have is actionable, nothing they choose to do can be based on prior observations or decisions.
If that's 'agency' then you're a fricking moron.
>How can there be any agency if nothing was decided until the players did something about it?
Why would the players care? That's the fricking of being a DM. They don't know this stuff and thus, it gets decided AFTER they make the choice so the conflict can continue. Like I said, this is functionally equivalent to not knowing any of the underlying conflict yourself and improvising the outcome. This is just a formalization of what experienced DMs do already.
> if they did have another path ready that plays on them having more information instead flipping the narrative
How is that any different from what is presented in the OP? You are creating an A plot and a B plot. This is so stupid, think about what you're writing for five fricking seconds.
Experienced GMs of shit kinds of games, maybe.
If you can't be assed to write like three sentences of notes about important npcs and what they're up to, all you're 'experienced' at is storytelling to a captive audience.
But I recognize that the GM's job is now seen as some sort of drama entertainer, so you're probably in the right for that.
What on earth are you talking about and what does this have to do with the OP? The OP is a script from the Baldur's Gate game and how it changes based on the players actions. This is literally how player agency is supposed to function, albeit in a less preplanned manner. If you are not altering the actions NPCs take based on player choices, you are literally, by definition, negating player agency.
Except that the players actions retroactively change shit they couldn't have changed. The players choice isn't informed. You can't make an agent choice if the world retroactively fricking twists itself to something you couldn't have guessed.
>Except that the players actions retroactively change shit they couldn't have changed. The players choice isn't informed. You can't make an agent choice if the world retroactively fricking twists itself to something you couldn't have guessed.
Explain how this is any different from the DM knowing frick all about his own world and improvising the outcome based on what happens in session.
>The DM knowing frick all about his own world
Then he's not an experienced or good GM, is he homosexual?
>And improvising the outcome
If the outcome is improvised down to who the murderer was in a fricking murder mystery just to save your precious story beat, then that is, again, textbook storyshitting.
If this doesn't get through to you, then I can't convince you, and I'm just glad I don't play with your dumb ass.
So your arugment is, in essence, that a cohesive and logical set of events based on a situation can't exist? That everything can and should be asspulled for whatever you think is the 'most entertaining' at the time? That 'experienced GMing' isn't setting up scenarios and arbitrating them, but just saying the outcome of the players actions is whatever you arbitrarily think sounds good?
Frick off and die.
>If the outcome is improvised down to who the murderer was in a fricking murder mystery just to save your precious story beat, then that is, again, textbook storyshitting.
This isn't a fricking murder mystery, I don't know where you got this from. It's a romance subplot that leads to a final confrontation. I agree that creating a murder mystery puzzle with no actual solution for the players is stupid, but that's literally what's not happening here.
What's happening in the OP is Anomen goes off to settle something from his backstory and you must go off to retrieve him. There's nothing to solve, what's happening here is that the details about his backstory have changed in response to the player's choices. Which is literally what you're supposed to do as a DM.
>progress on the same track
>when it's an entirely different track
You have literally no idea what you're talking about. Run a game for once in your life.
I've ran enough that I feel embarrassed about posting here. It's a shitty gm style that doesn't respect the players actions. And players will be justified to point that out. Which probably happened because you seem to take this very personel
Okay what would you do with Anomen then if you were running him as an NPC in your game? Would absolutely nothing in his backstory change in response to player choices? Because that's what you're suggesting.
No I'd suggest that you give the players enough chances to find out what really happened and depending on their actions be able to keep him in the party. That way the players actions get respected. You need to adopt a little different gming style by creating a few npcs and situations and how they play out even without the interaction of the players. If they fail in finding the truth you can let it play out in one way described in the pic - your choice whoever is the murderer. But if they solve the mystery you need a backup plan that furthers the adventure by them knowing the culprit. What I would do would be introducing a plot where a thirs party tried to frame somebody with the murder and bringing anomen to kill that person to get rid of both. The group can than start to act against that third party. But that's just a suggestion. The point is give the players at least a chance to get it right.
>No I'd suggest that you give the players enough chances to find out what really happened and depending on their actions be able to keep him in the party
The problem with this is that it's an NPC, the NPC is going to do what an NPC does. If the NPC goes off to do something stupid, that's your standard plot hook. You are basically saying something along the lines of,
>give the players the opportunity to prevent any plot hooks from happening
Which is stupid and self-defeating.
>mystery
This isn't a mystery. Think of it as the reason for WHY the plot hook happens as changing in response to the players' previous actions. You are changing the details about the plot hook (eg who the murderer was) in order to ensure the plot hook logically fits in with the players' previous choices regarding the NPC. Again, functionally equivalent to improvisation.
It's an npc. Players have the ability to influence what npcs do. Even with that railroading setup you are in danger of being surprised by the players preventing the npc to leave the group at all and you as dm wouldn't be able to do anything about it if you play by the rules. Never underestimate the players ability to frick up your plot.
Second: you basically waved a whodunit in front of the players. The players will want to investigate the murder especially if they give a shit about the npc. But the intended solution gives them no chance to solve it. You will basically have a bunch of players that will feel shit because they hunted an hour or two for clues but never had the chance to find any.
>WHY
Amateur reasoning, that is why.
To summarize, since I have to actually get some work done today and can't watch this thread:
I agree with your point that crucial plot details cannot be changed after the fact. You cannot keep switching up whodunit in a murder mystery. It's the writing equivalent of fudging crucial dice rolls. You are basically undermining your own game at that point.
What my point is, given our miscommunication and the vagueness of the OP, is that non crucial plot details that get you to the meat of the story MUST change in response to player actions. It's kind of like a free way of letting the players feel like their choices matter, changing these trivial details like who killed who leading to this final confrontation, which is actual meat of the plot.
This is one of those things where it depends on how it is used and why it is used. You cannot violate the principle of fairness when coming up with a story, as there must be some reasonable expectation that the players can suss out the main story from the onset. It's similar to why you shouldn't fudge monster stats and try to run combat as literally as a video game does. If players catch on, they will be pissed.
That said, the ability to fudge details in retrospect is a crucial tool in the DM's toolset. It's what allows them to create living, breathing worlds. It all depends on how you use them. IMO, only use it to fudge details, not main story points.
Not the anon, and I don't intend this as an insult, but are you perhaps autistic? Or at least a very oldschool grognard? Your inability to grasp the, somewhat abstract I suppose, tool of cooperative world building that is used in many modern styles of play. I could understand preferring a style of play that doesn't use it (from what you wrote, you seem to go very strongly into the "GM builds the world, players run based solely on what the GM presented, GM arbitrates" style that would not use it), but the difficulties you have with realising why that tool is used in styles where players have a bigger improvisational impact on world building surprises me.
There are styles of play that outright require it: it's not unusual that players are allowed to on the fly make "retroactive changes" to the world, or rather fill in previously unspecified details, sometimes it's built into system mechanics like Fate aspect invoking or flashbacks in Blades in the Dark, sometimes it's just saying stuff like "my cousin is a tavern keeper in this city, let's ask him about this case, maybe he'll know something" and rolling with it even if no such cousin was specified before. As such the predefined structure of the world is limited, untill something is said out loud it's not set in stone including GM plans and world building, veto can happen but is usually limited to egregious breaches of common sense, often the game is run in the vein of "say yes" rule. As GM tools also need to take in consideration the possibility that shit will change on the fly, so the world building and adventure design will usually be based on multiple versions of what could be and picking the one that fits the most when introduced if not outright improvised.
[1/2]
[2/2]
That's the style of play that requires it, but the tool can be used in a more limited manner even with styles that don't give players such privileges as a tool for a GM to better tailor the adventure to what's going in the game (the simplest example would be fleshing out an NPC the party took a liking to even if it was supposed to die in his first scene initially) or to make up for mistakes he might have made along the way when improvising (like even in that murder mystery example, maybe a player asked for something he didn't expect, he answered something he thought out on the spot and later on it turned out that with all that information the way he envisioned it doesn't make much sense anymore).
Such things can happen to good GMs in any style, this is just a tool to makeup for it. If you say that you never need to improvise and you never make mistakes the either you're lying, you're railroading your players harder than all the rest of the thread combined, or you achieved apotheosis and I am sad you don't utilise it better than shitposting. And I'm not saying you shave to use that tool in sub situations, just that understanding why such a tool could be used and that it's not a crime should be the norm among people deep in the hobby.
You can spare yourself the 2/2. All I said only applies to the example in the OP.
As a gm I build sandboxes. The world happens around the players even without the players, where the players act and how changes how those events play out. In a setting the players have several points to influence the story but can't participate in all.
>How is that different
It wouldn't make the prior murder mystery useless and give the players a feeling of achievement for connecting the clues?
Than you can have the story play out differently instead railroading the players into the same scene only with slightly different pretenses. If the guy kills an innocent because the players got it wrong you do that and go on with that story. If you got the clues he won't leave the party and you could introduce a plot where someone wanted to frame the guy into the murder of the suspect.
It's not hard.
>Than you can have the story play out differently instead railroading the players into the same scene only with slightly different pretenses. If the guy kills an innocent because the players got it wrong you do that and go on with that story. If you got the clues he won't leave the party and you could introduce a plot where someone wanted to frame the guy into the murder of the suspect.
You are arguing about a matter of degrees. If the story plays out differently and results in a different scene, not just a slightly different scene, would you still say it was railroading? moron.
Yes, because the players had no real influence to reach the correct decision by their actions, it's a simply coinflip to push them into a similar situation so the story can progress on the same track after the scene.
And deep down you know it, because if not you wouldn't find it necessary to throw around sperg words.
>How can there be any agency if nothing was decided until the players did something about it? No information they have is actionable, nothing they choose to do can be based on prior observations or decisions.
If the ultimate outcome contradicts clues and hints in the story, then yes it's bullshit. But if you've got some scenario in which the players do not have perfect knowledge of the outcome, then deciding said outcome after the fact is essentially the same, from the player's perspective, as deciding the outcome beforehand. No agency is taken because no information is given.
Shrodinger's choice.
Why not just giving the players the possibility to find out the plotline from the beginning (50% Chance) and if they did have another path ready that plays on them having more information instead flipping the narrative
>But that wouldn't be railroading
Yes
That's just railroading, Anon. Stop being a homosexual by trying to invent new words.
>That's just railroading
>That railroading DM just totally railroaded us in to winning that combat we were trying to win.
Does not make sense.
>totally railroaded us in to winning that combat we were trying to win.
that is railroading, yes
>players are “supposed” to win this fight so the story can continue
>oh no, the players are being moronic or suck at combat and are about to lose and throw my plot off the rails
>fudge dice or pull some reinforcements out of your ass so they can win
>t-this isn’t railroading
>that is railroading, yes
You don't understand what railroading means. At no time ever did anyone ever complain about the GM 'railroading' the players in to succeeding at something the players were already trying to accomplish. Because the fact of the matter is no one ever thinks of railroading in this manner when it is used in common gaming parlance. However the gm CAN storyshit the players in to succeeding at the 'story' the players are attempting to write by being very loosey goosey with the rules and hand waving away consequences of those game rules. Back in the day railroading meant something, it's only that nu tourists to the hobby that are attempting to change the definition of railroading from what it actually means.
no, you don’t understand what it is, and whether someone complains or even knows about it is irrelevant to the fact that it happened
You don't understand what railroading is, hence why your examples refer to definitions of something else. A gm fudges dice, hand waves rules and plays god in the machine for the purpose of storyshitting.
Railroading is a useful term that refers to a commonly understood type of gm behavior. It's only in the last two decades have nu-tourists attempted to dilute that terminology so its meaning becomes confused but haven't succeeded because the majority of gamers still refer to railroading to mean in its traditional usage.
obvious samegay is obvious
Herp derp did you see anyone disputing that? Jesus Christ anon you're resorting to rejoinders that you have been conditioned to respond with through excessive exposure to Ganker culture.
first week, huh
I'm willing to bet I've been here a damn sight longer than you.
>doesn’t even deny it
lurk 10 years before posting
>lurk 10 years before posting
Welcome new friend.
cont
>fudge dice
fudge dice is a separate term hence why it is not thought of or referred to as railroading.
>pull some reinforcements out of your ass
god in the machine is a separate term again hence why it is not thought of or referred to as railroading.
you’re being a little semantics debating Black person conflating the method for the effect
>god in the machine
holy pseud
>conflating the method for the effect
I doubt very much you actually understand what it is you're trying to convey and are simply using words to appear 'thoughtful' on an anonymous message board.
Never assume any combat is winnable and disregard any semblance of balance when designing combat encounters. The encounters should either be based in universe logic or on random tables (in universe statistics) if you don't have time to prepare.
The word you're looking for is railroading.
Lot of sperging ITT over this
you obviously have no idea what actual railroading is
mostly because:
Of this post right here.
As for the "its the same as improv" defenders, that is the correct answer.
Nothing should be considered set in stone until its announced at the table, everything else is just notes and suggestions about 'what could happen' for the dm's eyes only, and the person running the game gets to enjoy all of the fun of his arbitrary privilege to narrate anything Not-The-PCs.
The reason why this isn't a problem is because the argument hinges upon Players knowing metagame information. And anyone arguing against needs to stop and reconsider why they feel entitled to the metagame answers.
I choose what happens with my npcs, period, its right there in the title NON player characters. You don't play them, I do.
Deceiving the players is evil regardless of your intentions.
your post has more space than Spelljammer, mind the gap next time will ya Timmy?
>There's that word again.
He said the word! HE SAID THE WORD!!!!
Frick off, PbtA homosexual. Any luck with those trust issues we talked about?
pbta is storyshitting by design, what the guck are you saying
Storyshitting guy badmouthes all other systems because he wants more players for his shitty barely-a-game system.
What you are saying is nonsensical.
>"Anyone who says otherwise has never run a game."
>Once again, the average /tg/ schizo invalidates his own opinion with a single sentence.
No, it's a valid criticism because it's people who aren't stage magicians commenting on how to do magic correctly. So much of DMing is soft skills and stuff like retroactively changing events that the players don't know about is important for maintaining the appearance of a living, breathing world. If you take this away from a DM, they have very few tools.
And again, it is functionally equivalent to full improvisation, which people like you seem to love so much.
It's already been explained to you why it's stupid. Stop repeating yourself, moron.
>By having a quantum ogre like you just posted, the story can continue regardless of what the players choose.
RPGs are games. "Story" in a game isn't even 1% as important as player agency. If the players' decisions don't matter, players have no reason to play and it is insulting the players to invite them at all. You should just be sitting in a room alone, telling your epic cool stories to yourself.
Yes, obviously. Your picture is obviously unrelated, though.
Shit advice by storyshitter. Also, OP did not post any quantum ogres. The scenarios that play out are different.
>the story can continue
Then go write the story like the failed author you are and let the rest of us play the game.
What the frick
In any murder mystery adventure the gm decides the guilty party ahead of time, this isn't an issue of a quantum ogre this is just how anyone would prepare a muder mystery.
>Is it bad GMing to have the player's choice be retroactively wrong?
Absolutely.
I would never do this, unless it saved me 6+ hours of prep time.
Only if they catch you
I have literally never taken anomen and I never will
It's only bad GMing if players find out.
Depends, if players get new information about their actions that they made without complete information, then they may perceive their past actions as wrong. But if you changed the story to specifically make their past actions wrong to start a plot twist, then you're probably a bad writer and I would smear my sweaty balls on your coffee mugs.
The correct choice is to ignore him and instead get that crazy dwarf with specialism in dual axe wielding.
There's nothing wrong with not knowing all the consequences of your actions right away.
I am not 100% sure how you're using this word and everyone seems to be yelling about "storyshit" and "babying players" or the opposite so I'm going to be very clear in my response and space things out for clarity.
Literally retroactively?
If they made the right decision, I would not go back and change things to make it the wrong one. That would be very bad GMing.
Retroactively as in they "didn't know" or "couldn't have known" that it would be wrong?
Sometimes you make bad choices. Sometimes there is no good choice - but your choices still have an impact.
I would make it possible for them to find out beforehand, but sometimes people do not put that work in and that can bite them in the ass. That is normal and good GMing.
You should probably make sure it doesn't break everything so that the campaign ends prematurely though.
Changing it would be bad DMing - and if it fricked everything up somehow so that you HAVE to change it? You either fricked up by hinging everything on a player decision or fricked up by not stopping them from doing something so incredibly ridiculous that it ends everything despite player choice being accounted for.
>go into thread
>the word "storyshit" is uttered
>post this and leave smugly, knowing there are no humans here
You've all been filtered.
Yes. Quantum ogres are a thing and have their place, but the sort in the image is bad DM'ing; if a murder is a plot point, basic facts like who did the deed and who is to blame should in stone, albeit possibly not apparent to the players. If someone important dies, have a close associate take up their mantle so the plot can continue. At the same time, when setting up important but mortal NPCs, also set up lackeys and implied string-bearers as failsafes.
The case in the image can be easily changed to make sense by giving Saerk co-conspirators who are only just discovered in the second path instead of making Saerk retroactively innocent.
The only correct choice is to have Anomen break down, then kick him out of your party.
>To save the romance
Whoever this DM is is literally the gayest person ever.
I didn't read the OP's pic because the names were annoying
I'm gonna annoy both sides and say "it depends." The primary job of the DM, as I've always understood and practiced it, is to facilitate a fun experience for their players. (This is - or should be - fun for them.) If your players lucky-guess a complex series of events and amputate it before it even begins, the players are going to have LESS fun (to say nothing of the work you'll be doing finding something else for them to do this session). This is the case for 'all roads lead to Rome' DMing. At the same time, I do not believe this is the sort of thing that should be practiced all of the time or even most of the time. Players LIKE being right, like 'getting one over on you,' it makes the whole experience feel more authentic. Some of the most talked-about moments I've seen for players is when they successfully cut the Gordian Knot.
For similar reasons I do like challenges where the enemy is hopelessly outmatched, and enemies who when they start eating shit try to surrender or panic and flee. It gives the players a sense that they're gaining ground, they're bigger players in the world and people you do not want to cross. Done too often though it just becomes boring. It's all a delicate balance.
t.smooth brain who can only thing in terms of fun instead of engagement.
Engagement is produced by fun.
>boomer newbie trying to fit in
what are you even doing
It's just quantum ogres.