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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 8996393" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>Agreement to ride the rails doesn't mean that it isn't a railroad. Likewise, if the PC's enjoyed the game that was on rails, it doesn't meant that it isn't a railroad. They could say "Best game ever!" and it doesn't mean that it isn't a railroad. Likewise, if the PC's never realized they were on rails the whole time, it doesn't mean that it isn't a railroad. It's still a railroad, the PC's just never got off and never realized they couldn't get off.</p><p></p><p>Railroad either as a noun or a verb is often an ill-defined term. Most people sort of have an idea what the word means, but if you start polling people for a definition you'll find that there are a half a dozen slightly different conflicting ideas about what the term means. That's why I wrote an essay many years ago to try to define exactly what it was, and why I focused on techniques that are used and not the more difficult to define product of using those techniques. It's easy to define when you are taking away player agency in order to achieve a desired result. It's much harder to define when it is acceptable to do that and how much of that is acceptable to do, and often that becomes an argument over player preference and aesthetics.</p><p></p><p>Very often I find the real underlying premise of many arguments about "railroading" is simply, "Railroading is bad. I'm not a bad GM. Therefore what I do isn't railroading." That's very much the sort of underlying understanding (conscious or unconscious) that I was trying to break down. I was trying to point out that not only is a certain amount of railroading inevitable especially when improvising, but that quite often a little dash of railroading artfully used in a game made a better game, despite the howls of the players who had PTSD from GMs that overused the technique, used the techniques selfishly, and weren't prioritizing their players enjoyment over their own tightly held ideas of what ought to happen.</p><p></p><p>I understand why some people want to define railroading as "Taking away a players agency <em>without their consent". </em>This puts the focus of the term on the social contract. The implication is that if you put into the social contract player agreement to stay on the rails then it's not railroading. The idea being that if you have player consent, then it can't be "bad", and if it isn't bad it isn't railroading.</p><p></p><p>But I don't personally like adding that clause to the definition for a couple of reasons.</p><p></p><p>First, because IMO, the crudest and most potentially problematic way to railroad is Metagame Direction where the GM is telling players what to do and how to play. There are Story Games where you do have as part of the process of play assigning roles to players and telling them how to play out a scene. But in those games, at least IMO the most functional varieties, you have shared narrative control where you have some mechanism of rotating who has authority over how a scene is supposed to play out. In most traditional styles of tabletop RPGs, you just don't have any or much shared narrative control. I don't want to ever suggest, "Your character wouldn't do that because the premise of the game that you agreed to is that you were loyal followers of the Duke." is a solution to the GM not getting what they want from the story. "The premise of this game is that you agreed to do what I wanted you to do." is still railroading.</p><p></p><p>And the second reason is that I want to be able to classify adventures by how much they are on rails as a way of judging which sort of players with which particular aesthetics or play are likely to enjoy the adventure, even before any element of the adventure is presented to them. I don't want to put the focus on whether the GM gets away with it either by getting player consent to get on rails or by arranging it so that the players don't realize they are on rails. I don't know when I was first exposed to the term back in that pre-internet era, but my opinions on it were formed by reading published adventures and asking myself whether or not the players had enough agency or capacity to make choices. This focus on "enough agency" is where my definition actually comes from.</p><p></p><p>I can remember a particular published adventure for CoC where the premise is something like the Great Race of Yith decides to use the players as guinea pigs in a time travel experiment and the adventure features lots of Endurium Walls and Omnipotent NPCs to ensure that the PCs are just along for the ride, being shown various scene but given no real way to interact or alter the outcome. I think it's fair to say that's a railroad whether or not the players consent to playing a game when they are going to be on rails. Maybe managing player expectations in that case is a good idea, but the adventure is on rails regardless.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 8996393, member: 4937"] Agreement to ride the rails doesn't mean that it isn't a railroad. Likewise, if the PC's enjoyed the game that was on rails, it doesn't meant that it isn't a railroad. They could say "Best game ever!" and it doesn't mean that it isn't a railroad. Likewise, if the PC's never realized they were on rails the whole time, it doesn't mean that it isn't a railroad. It's still a railroad, the PC's just never got off and never realized they couldn't get off. Railroad either as a noun or a verb is often an ill-defined term. Most people sort of have an idea what the word means, but if you start polling people for a definition you'll find that there are a half a dozen slightly different conflicting ideas about what the term means. That's why I wrote an essay many years ago to try to define exactly what it was, and why I focused on techniques that are used and not the more difficult to define product of using those techniques. It's easy to define when you are taking away player agency in order to achieve a desired result. It's much harder to define when it is acceptable to do that and how much of that is acceptable to do, and often that becomes an argument over player preference and aesthetics. Very often I find the real underlying premise of many arguments about "railroading" is simply, "Railroading is bad. I'm not a bad GM. Therefore what I do isn't railroading." That's very much the sort of underlying understanding (conscious or unconscious) that I was trying to break down. I was trying to point out that not only is a certain amount of railroading inevitable especially when improvising, but that quite often a little dash of railroading artfully used in a game made a better game, despite the howls of the players who had PTSD from GMs that overused the technique, used the techniques selfishly, and weren't prioritizing their players enjoyment over their own tightly held ideas of what ought to happen. I understand why some people want to define railroading as "Taking away a players agency [I]without their consent". [/I]This puts the focus of the term on the social contract. The implication is that if you put into the social contract player agreement to stay on the rails then it's not railroading. The idea being that if you have player consent, then it can't be "bad", and if it isn't bad it isn't railroading. But I don't personally like adding that clause to the definition for a couple of reasons. First, because IMO, the crudest and most potentially problematic way to railroad is Metagame Direction where the GM is telling players what to do and how to play. There are Story Games where you do have as part of the process of play assigning roles to players and telling them how to play out a scene. But in those games, at least IMO the most functional varieties, you have shared narrative control where you have some mechanism of rotating who has authority over how a scene is supposed to play out. In most traditional styles of tabletop RPGs, you just don't have any or much shared narrative control. I don't want to ever suggest, "Your character wouldn't do that because the premise of the game that you agreed to is that you were loyal followers of the Duke." is a solution to the GM not getting what they want from the story. "The premise of this game is that you agreed to do what I wanted you to do." is still railroading. And the second reason is that I want to be able to classify adventures by how much they are on rails as a way of judging which sort of players with which particular aesthetics or play are likely to enjoy the adventure, even before any element of the adventure is presented to them. I don't want to put the focus on whether the GM gets away with it either by getting player consent to get on rails or by arranging it so that the players don't realize they are on rails. I don't know when I was first exposed to the term back in that pre-internet era, but my opinions on it were formed by reading published adventures and asking myself whether or not the players had enough agency or capacity to make choices. This focus on "enough agency" is where my definition actually comes from. I can remember a particular published adventure for CoC where the premise is something like the Great Race of Yith decides to use the players as guinea pigs in a time travel experiment and the adventure features lots of Endurium Walls and Omnipotent NPCs to ensure that the PCs are just along for the ride, being shown various scene but given no real way to interact or alter the outcome. I think it's fair to say that's a railroad whether or not the players consent to playing a game when they are going to be on rails. Maybe managing player expectations in that case is a good idea, but the adventure is on rails regardless. [/QUOTE]
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