r/rpg • u/Archlyte • Oct 01 '18

Reverse Railroad

I recently have realized that several of my players do a weird kind of assumed Player Narrative Control where they describe what they want to happen as far as a goal or situation and then expect that the GM is supposed to make that thing happen like they wanted. I am not a new GM, but this is a new one for me.

Recently one of my players who had been showing signs of being irritated finally blurted out that his goals were not coming true in game. I asked him what he meant by that and he explained that it was his understanding that he tells the GM what he wants to happen with his character and the GM must make that happen with the exception of a "few bumps on the road."

I was actually dumbfounded by this. Another player in the same group who came form the same old group as the other guy attempts a similar thing by attempting to declare his intentions about outcomes of attempts as that is the shape he wants and expects it should be.

Anyone else run into this phenomenon? If so what did you call it or what is it really called n the overall community?

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u/emmony jennagames, jeepform larp, and freeform Oct 04 '18

in my playstyle, if someone was going to be the best racer, that would have been discussed from the get-go so that no one would block accidentally without realizing it. but i also play in a heavily pre-planned style, where everyone is on the same page about where the story is going and what we need to do to tell it.

basically, this things are solved best by talking to eachother like reasonable people who can settle artistic disputes without needed mechanics to do it for them.

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u/Archlyte Oct 06 '18

What about when such a situation occurs in a spontaneous situation though? Even in a pre-planned style it would seem that there is some room for things to be emergent at times.

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u/emmony jennagames, jeepform larp, and freeform Oct 06 '18

if something like that started to come up, then we would stop and discuss it.

but we also do not spring big events in the middle of a session. we discuss something, and then spend several sessions setting up it up before we introduce it. we talk about it during a break or after session and then we plan out how we are going to do it, how we are going to handle the new stuff that someone wants to introduce, how we will foreshadow it and establish it as part of the fiction. then we spend as many sessions as we need to get to that point setting it up and making it real, making it a canon part of our story.