Tag: #classicstyle

Railroading has always been an issue at game tables. Once adventures moved out of dungeons and added more elements from genre fiction, one common fashion in which GMs fail involves trying to force PCs along a set plot line. Some of this may arise from the early published adventure modules being for tournament play and assuming the party followed an expected line of play from one round to the next. Modules published after those also assumed a general sequence of events contained in the descriptions of encounters.

The problem with this is that good play involves player choices on how to pursue goals, not a script that they have to follow. Thus, we’ve always heard lamentations about GMs precluding player choices by railroading parties. I maintain that a sign of good classic play is that there are no railroads.

Now, adding situations of the sort found in genre literature expands the RPG experience well beyond dungeon delving and the types of stories that can arise. A classic approach to stories is to let them play out as they will, based solely on the player choices, and avoid forcing specific developments. Setting up supposed climactic scenes is possible *only* when actual play has lead to them…and certainly not possible before the PCs have even begun play. So, any adventure material written with expected climaxes just doesn’t work in classic play, at all.

Classic style play is all about following trails from one situation to another, without any idea about which trail the PCs are going to follow at any given time. The party isn’t pushed to enter the Haunted Forest at point X and then encounter Y, Z, V, and Q in that order, though it could play that way. The party could just as easily, based on previous play, enter somewhere else and run into V, then Z, and never run into Y and Q.

This is all part of playing to find out what happens. The players have to be able to choose what their characters do in the world, without outcomes being preordained. They don’t have to end up fighting the evil sorceror if they don’t want to and the GM shouldn’t be trying to force the issue.

I was briefly involved in a discussion at one time about character arcs. I mentioned that, as an old school guy, I had no truck with preplanned character stories and did nothing to support them. Any player with preconceived notions of their character’s arc are just SOL in an old school game. Such a statement was regarded as heresy by the youngsters and there wasn’t much quality discussion in that forum, so I dropped it then.

I’ve been thinking about the topic, though, and can see how one of the foundations of classic play works against much that’s pre-planned. Pre-planned character stories? Nope. Pre-planned character development? Nope. Involved backstories intended to affect play and what the GM prepares? Nope.

I see one of the hallmarks of classic play as playing to find out. That is, we prepare situations that provide confict and adventure and choices to be made of the kinds found in literature, then place characters in the midst of it all and play to see what happens. If a good story results, we’re happy. If a disjointed story results, we’re happy. If a tale of catastrophe and woe results, we’re happy. We’re not attempting to make any specific story result.

Because of that desire to find out what happens in play, we can preclude anything done to predetermine results. For example, the practice of players developing involved backstories that are intended to set up their characters for some specific storylines doesn’t really fit. As those background events weren’t played out, they don’t fit the style. The player didn’t find out any of it via play. (There are also other issues with such background stories, though not pertinent here.)

The same with character arcs. The player may want to develop the character’s history in some specific fashion. That doesn’t mesh well with the approach of developing the character only according to what happens in play. The player may want the PC to become a powerful general involved in overthrowing a despotic emperor, yet the results of play may very well work against that. For the player to try to work to that end when the rest of the group would make choices that don’t support it can make for strained play at the table; no player should be trying to force the fiction in a specific direction.

This also applies to builds. I’ll suggest that good systems don’t allow for any specific builds to be overall better than any others, just on the face of it. A player trying to plan a build for a PC’s entire career at the outset of play just doesn’t work, as it involved trying to force the fiction in a specific direction. The best practice in eliminating this is to have a system that really doesn’t support detailed builds in the first place, removing the temptation for such, and allowing players to concentrate more on interesting play.