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Railroading is bad?
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<blockquote data-quote="PapersAndPaychecks" data-source="post: 2342883" data-attributes="member: 28854"><p>Yes. It's not necessarily bad railroading, and it might well go undetected by the PCs, but it's railroading.</p><p> </p><p>For the game to be meaningful, the player characters have to be able to make choices which have a real impact on their character's destiny. (If you aren't going to offer those choices, you might as well sit around drinking beer while the DM tells you what happens, then tot up the xp and treasure.)</p><p> </p><p>Good Choices are those where skilled play would enable the player to gain advantage -v- unskilled play. So, for example, a Bad Choice would be where the player characters see two levers. Pulling one gains them a level of experience, pulling the other costs them a level, and there's no information available to tell the players which is which... it's a non-railroaded choice, but it's arbitrary. A Good Choice would be where the player characters have a choice of routes to take, <em>and</em> taking one route leads to different things to the other, <em>and</em> there's a mechanism available where skilled play would enable the characters to make the decision on an informed basis.</p><p> </p><p>An excellent example of this in practice is where a defeated monster surrenders rather than fighting to the death. Unskilled players will normally kill it or let it go; skilled players will generally question it. In a well-run game, the captive will sometimes possess information which is at least marginally useful to the players ("Yeah, dere are firty-free orcs in dat cave wot's ahead, an' dey've got a pit trap in da entrance corridor an' an ogre wot lives in a pit right at da back - I kin draw yer a map of it if yer promises not ta kill me.") By making the correct choices, the players can gain information which will affect their future.</p><p> </p><p>If the player characters can't affect their chances of success through skilled play, then they'll play in an unskilled fashion (always fight to the death, go into battle without a plan - classic symptom of this is the "ego charge" where one fighter decides to attack without reference to the rest of the party - frequently argue with one another or even fight each other when in hostile territory, and generally assume that the world will adapt itself so they gain levels and treasure, and move through the plot, at a roughly predictable rate no matter what they do.) If they learn that good play gets them treasure and levels and achieves their roleplaying objectives more quickly, they'll start to play better and everyone will have more fun.</p><p> </p><p><strong>Edited to add:</strong> Railroading is <em>not</em> necessarily a bad thing when it's used to skip over meaningless events. You can use a railroad to give the characters a quick taxi ride to the start of the adventure, for example; that isn't necessarily bad.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="PapersAndPaychecks, post: 2342883, member: 28854"] Yes. It's not necessarily bad railroading, and it might well go undetected by the PCs, but it's railroading. For the game to be meaningful, the player characters have to be able to make choices which have a real impact on their character's destiny. (If you aren't going to offer those choices, you might as well sit around drinking beer while the DM tells you what happens, then tot up the xp and treasure.) Good Choices are those where skilled play would enable the player to gain advantage -v- unskilled play. So, for example, a Bad Choice would be where the player characters see two levers. Pulling one gains them a level of experience, pulling the other costs them a level, and there's no information available to tell the players which is which... it's a non-railroaded choice, but it's arbitrary. A Good Choice would be where the player characters have a choice of routes to take, [i]and[/i] taking one route leads to different things to the other, [i]and[/i] there's a mechanism available where skilled play would enable the characters to make the decision on an informed basis. An excellent example of this in practice is where a defeated monster surrenders rather than fighting to the death. Unskilled players will normally kill it or let it go; skilled players will generally question it. In a well-run game, the captive will sometimes possess information which is at least marginally useful to the players ("Yeah, dere are firty-free orcs in dat cave wot's ahead, an' dey've got a pit trap in da entrance corridor an' an ogre wot lives in a pit right at da back - I kin draw yer a map of it if yer promises not ta kill me.") By making the correct choices, the players can gain information which will affect their future. If the player characters can't affect their chances of success through skilled play, then they'll play in an unskilled fashion (always fight to the death, go into battle without a plan - classic symptom of this is the "ego charge" where one fighter decides to attack without reference to the rest of the party - frequently argue with one another or even fight each other when in hostile territory, and generally assume that the world will adapt itself so they gain levels and treasure, and move through the plot, at a roughly predictable rate no matter what they do.) If they learn that good play gets them treasure and levels and achieves their roleplaying objectives more quickly, they'll start to play better and everyone will have more fun. [b]Edited to add:[/b] Railroading is [i]not[/i] necessarily a bad thing when it's used to skip over meaningless events. You can use a railroad to give the characters a quick taxi ride to the start of the adventure, for example; that isn't necessarily bad. [/QUOTE]
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