Railroading is bad?

[sniffles]

I just thought I'd ask about something that's been touched on in this thread. Are the players to a certain extent responsible for going along with the plot? I mean, not all DMs create a campaign world where the PCs can just do whatever they want. Certainly, one would imagine that as a player you have to 'suspend the disbelief' and invent motivation for your character to follow the DMs plot? Basically I'm asking if players can also be responsible for railroading?
Pinotage

That's a good question! I personally don't think that players are responsible for railroading unless one character's personal storyline takes over and turns all the other PCs into extras. But I do agree that there is a certain responsibility for the players to give in to the plot a little instead of insisting on going their own way. "I'm just roleplaying my character" is an easy excuse to make, but everyone should be cooperating to make the game a good experience for all concerned, not just for one player or the GM.

 

[billd91]

OK, I just have to point out that in my group "Going to the Belgian Congo" is a phrase that means following a false clue or wandering too far away from the real plot or adventure to some place that was never supposed to even come up, but may have been placed as an ad lib flavor line from the DM.

And I think people on these boards have very different ideas of "railroading" from all the threads I have seen. <snip>

Sounds to me like you're played Masks of Nyarlathotep, a campaign with several interesting red herrings scattered around.

As far as I'm concerned, there are good uses of railroading and bad uses of railroading. The good uses, getting a plot going in the first place by clever use of flexibly planned hooks that the PCs can't avoid encountering and enforcing the consequences of certain actions (and certain background processes) in a realistic manner, are such that I hesitate to call them 'railroading' though I know they fit some people's definitions of the term.

The bad railroading, and given the negative connotations to the use of the term, is really when the DM is so set on things happening a certain way that the players might as well not be along for the ride. These might be following the hook the PCs can't avoid rather than just encountering it, things happening unrealistically because regardless of precautions or actions the PCs take, and so on.

 

[Janx]

I think it's becoming a railroading game as soon as the players WANT to go off the trail but the CANT. As long as everyone plays along, and has fun, its just linear gameplay

Jupp just hit the definition on the head.

Railroading is when the PCs CANNOT make a choice because the DM prevents them or circumvents every choice to lead directly back to his plot. Effectively, the PCs can't deviate or prevent something from happening.

Whole books have been written on the nature of Choice vs. choice. So saying my PC has no choice but to save the world, therefore he's being railroaded is misunderstanding what choice means.

In normal life (and in a good D&D game), you can choose to do anything. Literally. You choose to wake up and shower. You choose not to beat your spouse. You choose to take the freeway, instead of the backroads. You choose not to signal when turning left. You also choose to stop and help that guy being mugged. You choose whether to mail in the rent check or light the money on fire.

However, while those are all choices, many of them logical foregone conclusions that you avoid. In short, you pay the rent instead of burning your money, because you need a place to stay. While technically, you have a choice, it's not a real Choice. This situation does not constitute RailRoading. It is merely that fact that each choice path has a result and consequence. When each one is weighed, a rational being will choose the one that provides the most value. As such, certain choices are effectively eliminated by our perception, but they still exist.

Conversely, a RailRoading DM not only gives no choices, but actively prevents you from succeeding at any choices that aren't on his prescribed plan. A RailRoading DM would ONLY allow you to mail in your rent check. He'd make the match blow out before you could burn the money. He'd make the roads blocked so you couldn't drive down to the landlord's with the cash. He'd do this, because the next scene in his story is for somebody to call the next day and ask where the money is, so he can get a PC to say, "The check's in the mail."
which is a code phrase for the spies that accidentally called the wrong number.


Janx

 

[The Shaman]

...linear gameplay...

I've been struggling to find a term to describe a style of play, and you just hit on it perfectly - most excellent!

 

[RFisher]

If a player were to ask you, "What are we suppossed to do?" & you have an answer for that question... Well, that's not railroading per se, but it's laying the rails. You're probably (IMHO) on the wrong track.

If you figure out what the bad guys (& not necessarily bad NPCs) do or what the universe throws at the PCs & sit back to watch how the PCs react to & deal with it, then you're on the right track.

Again, IMHO.

 

[Darkness]

As for Darkness examples especially the planar doorway, I actually see nothing wrong with that

Alright, I'll try again.

PCs are told to travel along a road. They are free to wander off in a random direction they have no reason to go, of course - what they do doesn't really matter anyway. Because...

...after a while, the plot demands that the floor below them breaks in. They have no chance to notice that in advance, nor to avoid it.

They land in a dungeon that has only one exit: A planar doorway that sucks everyone nearby in. To add insult to injury, it is impossible to escape the sucking and also impossible to notice in advance that this lies behind that door. If you open the door, you're sucked in. If you don't, you're stuck in a dungeon you entered by no choice of your own (except for agreeing to play with that DM).

Yes, that was all there was to it. I know because the DM in question was one of my players who insisted (without telling the other players) that he prepage the stage for a planar campaign DM'ed by me. He didn't tell me in advance about the severe (and, more importantly, very obvious) railroading he was planning, though. It's entirely my fault that I trusted him to do something non-sucky, I know - it's just that he's a very good friend and excellent player, so I resisted my usual paranoia just this once.

 

[Evilhalfling]

City of the Spider Queen is even worse. Not many characters would want to delve into an adventure that may entail certain death. Surely then, characters have to invent motivation for themselves to do on such a long and ardous dungeon crawl? I can think of scores of player concepts that wouldn't care at all for that type of adventuring, but that doesn't mean the game is poor or you need to look around.

Hence the question I asked. Can a player's character concept deliberately railroad a campaing or adventure? Is it partly the player's responsibility to generate a character that will play along in the adventures listed above? And, should one character in a party find that his player concept doesn't fit this type of adventuring, shouldn't he 'suspend disbelief'?

Pinotage

CoSQ really bugged me because I got tired of the dungeon crawl and acttually had an obligation to travel to a fallen PCs homeland and return his item X to his family, but the time preassure that came with the later parts of the game really forced us into dungeon crawling.

After a few more weeksthe DM was as tried as I was and allowed an innovative ( and much shorter) end to the campaign then was written.

As to your question I have this problem all the time as a DM - ensuring that the entire group has a motivation for every adventure is hard. Some suspension of disbelief is necessary -
but not always - when the party was pressured to aid some evil NPCs on a quest one member refused - while the others accepted (the benfits out weighed the costs) the refusing player got an evil NPC handed to them, and receieved full experaince.

 

[Odhanan]

To understand the whole thing about railroading one has to wonder what it means in the context of RPGs. Railroading isn't so much about giving clues or having a plot with no holes as it is about a lack of choices.

Role-playing games are fun in part because in the game you can do what you want or nearly. Doesn't mean there aren't any consequences to your character's actions, and there should be to preserve the believability of the game, but if as a player I want Esiope Mabtorn my Sorcerer to spit at the face of the good king Karl, I CAN. Doesn't mean I won't have to suffer the consequences of such an act, like being thrown in the dungeons of the keep, but still, I can.

In which cases don't you have choices? In two cases: contrition and evidence.

If you are forced to do something or the game stops, you have no choice.
If there options but one is clearly, obviously the good one and the others are bad, then there is no choice.

Railroading is about creating a plot that forces the players to follow the line or the game stops. It's also about a plot where the options would be obvious and not give any real choice. In each of these occurences, the players aren't doing what they want with their character. They become passive viewers, and passivity is the archenemy of a good, enjoyable game session for many players including me.

 

[The_Universe]

They land in a dungeon that has only one exit: A planar doorway that sucks everyone nearby in. To add insult to injury, it is impossible to escape the sucking and also impossible to notice in advance that this lies behind that door. If you open the door, you're sucked in. If you don't, you're stuck in a dungeon you entered by no choice of your own (except for agreeing to play with that DM).

But is this really all that different from having a game based on an invasion from another kingdom or plane? It's going to happen. Period. No chance it's not. At best, the players can hope to find out about elements of the invasion and warn people, or (maybe) slow down or stop some small part of the invasion force.

The fact of the matter is that in order to maintain some kind of verisimilitude, sometimes there's just stuff that happens. I mean, at this rate, a meteorite shower counts as "railroading" because the players didn't have any say in creating it.

"It's raining? Dammit! Did I say that my character wanted it to rain? No! This is RAILROADING!"

Sometimes, there are bigger forces than the PCs, and all they can do is react. The same is true in real life, and I really fail to see why it's so often decried as "railroading" when it happens in the game.

 

[sniffles]

But is this really all that different from having a game based on an invasion from another kingdom or plane? It's going to happen. Period. No chance it's not. At best, the players can hope to find out about elements of the invasion and warn people, or (maybe) slow down or stop some small part of the invasion force.

The fact of the matter is that in order to maintain some kind of verisimilitude, sometimes there's just stuff that happens. I mean, at this rate, a meteorite shower counts as "railroading" because the players didn't have any say in creating it.

"It's raining? Dammit! Did I say that my character wanted it to rain? No! This is RAILROADING!"

Sometimes, there are bigger forces than the PCs, and all they can do is react. The same is true in real life, and I really fail to see why it's so often decried as "railroading" when it happens in the game.

You know, at first this got my hackles up, and I started thinking "That DM should have allowed a Reflex save for those PCs to avoid getting sucked through the doorway." Then I stopped and thought about it again, and I think you're right, Universe. Sometimes things happen that the PCs can't affect. But I think those things should either be minor things, like getting rained on, or they should happen very seldom.