I submit that "railroading" is fun for all in two circumstances, when the players are willing participants, or have no idea at all.

Point the first: The players are never "willing" to be railroaded. Essentially, that means nothing they do matters. They can only affect what is set out for them to do; the bulk of the plot is handled by uber-GMPC's. Players like to feel that they are in charge of their character's actions, and that said actions will affect the game world. Nobody like to play a game where the GM tells them everything that they're going to do-- the PC's just become GM puppets. This is one of the signs of very bad or inexperienced GMing.

Point the second: If the players have "no idea" of the options availiable to their characters, this is the fault of the GM. Part of the job of a good GM is to make the world immersive for the players, and to make sure they understand the consequences of their actions. If they don't know they have more options, then the GM isn't telling them enough about the world. Frequently, this is seen in tandem with "grudge monsters" and other GM abuses.

All this is basic knowledge to any experienced GM. While you may try to nudge the players in a certain direction, all experienced GM's know that if the players really want to go a different way, the best thing to do is to let them. Sometimes, that even means saying: "Sorry, guys, but you walked away from my plot hook, and I don't have anything else prepared. We're going to have to end the game here." It's only the bad and inexperienced GMs who get so attached to their precious stories, that they feel the need to ramrod the players through it. Veteran GM's know when to let it lie.

If my players are ever in danger of derailing my precious, precious, storylines (or if they're thinking too much and I get bored), I just maul them with a team of black-clad commandos from the shadows around them. I find suppressed submachinegun fire to be a fantastic motivating force to get them hurrying wildly again along whatever railroad I choose to send them !!

I'll also add that while I'm not an "experienced Vampire storyteller", I was mildly obsessed with Mage: The Ascencion for a while there. IIRC, all oWoD books came with a huge chapter on GMing, and my Mage book emphasizes the importance of collaborative storytelling and GM flexibility. "Player creativity is part of the fun of storytelling"-- I think that was the exact quote.

Now, I seem to recall that this chapter was pretty much the same across the various oWoD games. I have to wonder how any "experience vampire storyteller" could have missed reading that chapter.

None of you have ever played in any of my games. Don't tell me when my players have fun and when they don't.

Ha ha ha, I've had the context of nearly every argument I've stated, completely ignored in favor of a pointless semantical debate. Consider the debacle about my statement of "NO resemblance" between SR4 and nWoD instead of saying "fleeting resemblance".

In any case, the original statement was that NO players would enjoy being railroaded for any reason. I have personal experience that greatly contradicts that.

If they players don't know or don't care that they're being railroaded, they won't mind 't all.

If you really want to get into semantics, while being railroaded the people with you aren't players, they're an audience.

~J

Unless they don't know.

Then it's not railroading. Railroading is removing choice. I've arranged things such that players will choose a given path before, sure, but as soon as they can't step off that path it's railroading.

Ok, I'm wrong. It can be railroading if they don't know, but I've yet to meet anyone good enough to predict their players that well who still railroads.

~J

I would contend that it's still railroading, or at least still bad GMing, if your players never step out of line but you're ready to smack them back on track at any moment.

~J

Cain, your post is deeply offensive and unabashedly personal. You don't know me, you don't know anyone I know, and you don't know what you're talking about.

Suppose Kage, that there are many tracks, all of them equally acceptable to me as a GM, all of them equally enjoyable to the players and they're allowed to take whatever track they want, and make their own?

They're all tracks, they all have a beginning and an end, and they all have certain specific stops along the way and if you leave one, you're not on the same track anymore, you're just on a different one. So how is it not railroading?

If there are an infinite number of tracks that diverge at every point along all of those tracks, not only is it not railroading it's a metaphor stretched past its breaking point. If there are areas that the characters can't do or try something that they reasonably should be able to do or try because it jumps tracks at a nonapproved place, it's railroading.

To put it another way: you could argue that not taking a run is as much a track as taking a run. I will only accept this if you can find me a train station that runs trains to "place A" and "everywhere else" (the first can be any specific destination, the second must be all other destinations).

~J

Yeah, honestly the metaphor I would use is the PC's in my game are laying their own track through a countryside to their destination, it's my job as a GM to describe to them the ramifications of their path and to describe the world they travel through, not to force them in any direction what so ever. It's their story ultimately, it's about their lives and needs and desires, it's just my game world where those things are manifested. All the choices are theirs. Events will happen whether or not they choose to get involved, with all of the appropriate concequneces from their actions of lack thereof.

Players being doing things that they should reasonably be able to do is not what this thread is about.

Its about players doing something that by all rights should be impossible for them.

Now there may actually be a way to make something impossible. If your players accept that this is part of the rules, and if you as a GM are wise in your use of the impossible, I think this is a tool that could be used to great effect for the benefit of everyone playing.

The railroading that I have been promoting is when you make it impossible for players to do something that they shouldn't be able to do. You all are saying that there's nothign the players shouldn't be able to do.

I suspect that what you mean is that "There's nothing that players shouldn't be able to attempt to do." if that is what you're trying to say, then I agree.

But that's not reality. As far as I can tell, most things in real life just have gigantic TNs rather than "you can't succeed" points.

~J

But would the player really feel bad if they had failed at something so unlikely? Would it have detracted from their fun? I doubt it.

Yes, it would. *Especially* after burning 4 permanent karma pool. I would have gotten accused of GM partisanship, and the game would have degenerated into an argument.

If the players succeed at something so unlikely, they're apt to be high-fiving each other and applauding. In that moment of elation, how do you think they'll take it when you yank their victory out from under them?

Sorry, if they had failed NATURALLY. I should have specified.

The answer should be no. If they never had a chance to begin with, the answer would probably be yes.

~J

Yes, they would have; but they would have dealt with it. They would think: "Hell, at least we gave it our best shot!"

If you flat-out say it's impossible, and deny them a roll, that's poor GMing. If you decide to allow them a roll, then don't accept it when they make it, that's even worse GMing. Both of those are exactly what you're decribing when you're talking about "impossible" tasks.

I would never deny a player a roll without a good reason and I would never tell a player that something is impossible and I never ask for a roll unless I'm willing to accept the consequences of their success. The situation described is far to vague for me to explain what I would have done. Suffice it to say that I find that most situations rarely come down to a single die roll.

And Cain, you are correct that I am relatively young to gaming and game running and that my experience with Shadowrun has not been significant. However, I have enough experience to know when my players are genuinely having fun, and when they're just being nice.

In my experience the things that are or should be impossible for players to do are fairly obvious to the players, they are those things that defy any one of a number of real world physical laws without the excuse of magic or cyberware. I have never had a player dive into the ocean and insist on being given a skill test to be able to breath water. Where the players want a skill test, where they want to at least try, is where it's not so clear that failure is certain, or where failure should not be a certainty. I have had many players insist on trying to escape when the cops or the mob or another group has them completely surrounded and multiple firearms are trained on them, now in that situation the player dying is the most likely outcome but it is not in any way a complete certainty so they should at least have a chance of escape.

What concerns me about the new rules, and I suppose worries others as well, is the nature of the new base mechanic. With a fixed target number success or failure is determined by threshold, the number of successes you roll. With no mechanic for exploding dice you have a finite number of dice to roll in any given test and therefore a task that starts out as possible can become impossible by adding enough situational modifiers. If something is truly impossible it should never have a success test, it seems with SR4 an achievable task can be made impossible by the rules.

I can't imagine any player being happy at discovering, for example, that because of his injuries, the lighting, and several other situational factors he can no longer shoot his target, regardless of wether he lines the target up for several rounds or empties a thousand round belt of ammunition at the area where the target is standing.

They've said that Edge allows for rerolled 6s. So I suspect that through whatever method, Edge can be used to make the unnecessarily impossible, possible once more.

Nerbert, here's a simple example.

You've spent all week building up a long, complex adventure built around Evil Albert. During the very first encounter, before he's truly gotten Evil, things all go as planned until he's making his escape. He dives out a window, catches the prepared rope on his helicopter and his mage turns him invisible. One of the snipers gets to the window and wants to take the shot. The TN is ungodly (between 12 and 24), but it IS possible, and if he succeeds, your entire story you worked all week on is ruined.

Do you let them take the shot? Can you actually let them succeed?

This is how I anticipate this scene would progress with my players.

Me - "Ok, roll your firearms test."
Them - "Whats the TN?"
Me - "You can't see how many people are in his helicopter, you don't know what he's wearing, you can't even see him, so your professional opinion is "ungodly".
Them - "So what is it?"
Me - "You don't know, roll it."
Them - "Ok, I have...

Now, two scenarios. They roll something unbelievable. Lets say... 3 24s or something like that. No denying that thats an impressive dice roll.

Me - "Holy shit! You can't tell if you hit Albert or not, but your bullet pierces the gas tank of the helicopter and it starts to careen out of control."

Second scenario, they don't roll anything particularly special.

Me - "You can't tell if you hit Albert or not, but it looks like you've definitely wounded one of the guards in the helicopter. Despite your best efforts, Albert is getting away."

And then the guard would turn up later with a nasty limp and a vendetta.

Do you have his phone number?

That's what Directory Assistance is for

~J

Ok, you get his phone number, and you dial it. It rings, and he doesn't answer it. Your guess is he's a little busy hanging onto a rope and being hauled through the rain by a helicopter!

How can I (Let's assume for the moment I'm the player) not know what Evil Albert is wearing? Didn't he just jump out a window in front of me?

More importantly, since Evil Albert just went invisible (Presumably in front of me as well) why would it matter? I want to shoot at the area just below where the rope becomes slack since there's no weight on it below that point.

That doesn't matter, Spider. Just roll your pathetic Rifles skill, with no idea what the TN is, like you were told.

He's wearing a robe, he could be wearing body armor, you don't know.

I knew it! I knew the only criticism I would get was not telling the person the Target Number!

My criticism (unvoiced) isn't that you didn't tell the person the TN, it's that you didn't have a TN to begin with.

~J

Well maybe it is the way you told them. If you never tell your players the TN then it doesn't matter. But if you make it a regular habit of telling them then suddenly don't, then they are going to think you are railroading them, and they would be correct cause you are.

What I would do (and this may not work for you) is tally up the modifiers in your head. Say +8 for an invisible target, range call it +2, Moving target +2, The helicopter is moving another +2, what else, say it's raining (hell it is Seattle) +2.

Thats +16 to 5 thats a 21.

Incredibly unlikely but not impossible. Tell your player what the TN is and let him try. If he even scores a single hit it will be a miracle and a moment he remembers for a long time. If he misses then hey, he gave it a shot.

What you proposed doing is rail roading. You are telling him by default that he can't do it. One by not giving him the TN, and two by not really having one to give him.

Not telling someone the TN for a stealth test is one thing, not telling them what it is to shoot someone is another.

Yeah its railroading, thats what I've been saying all along.

Unless the guy is wearing body armor and has spells being sustained on him by people in the helicopter, people who could also be pulling him very quickly into the chopper. So that ads a running target modifier, also, its raining, so thats another modifier, he's clearly swinging around in the air, which makes it even harder, the longer he aims, the further away Albert is getting, no -1 for him. Initiative also makes a huge difference in how far away Albert is, but there's no reason for Albert to be surprised.

But anyway, all that doesn't matter. The point is, no player who isn't metagaming is going to be upset about anything except not being told what the modifier is. And even if he does roll really well, I reward him for it. You can't tell me that having Albert just die for no reason and ending my game prematurely is better then listening to a player moan quietly about the GM keeping secrets from him.

I would be pissed. Any player would be. You are deluding yourself in thinking they are not. No one, NO ONE, like to be railroaded regardless of the reasons.

Rewarding your player for rolling well? You 'reward' a player for rolling well by allowing his intended action to take place.

Tell me this... how often in your games do you let players hit somone they wern't aiming at (yet is still an enemy) for getting close to the target number they needed?

What would you be pissed about? Specifically?

It depends on what they're aiming at, if they're aiming at an important NPC that doesn't deserve to die yet, then they might very well hit something behind them. And also, if they're fighting in a supermarket, and they miss, they hit cabbage.

Hey look at it this way, no one, not one of you, would say anything if I had said "Ha ha! You successfully hit and kill... Evil Albert's body double!" What's the difference? (except for the fact that body doubles are cheap, undramatic, overused cliche, and hitting the helicopter is actually a dramatic and satisfying expenditure of a bullet.)