Why I Dislike the term Railroading

[BenBrown]

I don't think so. What effects? What root causes? What similarities are you vaguely referring to?

The whole point of your so-called "invisible railroading" is that the players never actually know or feel like they're being railroaded. There may be some obvious similarities to the GM's POV, but if the players don't ever see it, then there is a massive difference in game play.

Some days I think I'd like to run a campaign a group of vocal "sandbox" types, then after it's all over, see how much of my moving things around behind the scenes they noticed. My guess? Very little.

Historically, and in all the discussion I've seen online on this for years and years before the sandbox crowd started coopting and attempting to change well-known and well-used RPG jargon, your "invisible railroad" wasn't a railroad at all; those were tips and techniques for GM's who needed a well-prepared game and specifically wanted to not railroad their players, but who were unable (for whatever reason) to roll with the punches very well.

There wasn't a lot of discussion about railroading before the sandbox crowd got involved. There were gamer horror stories, but I don't recall any cases of the gamer horror stories eliciting the reply "that's not a railroad".

 

[Ariosto]

I would disagree. Let's assume a simple mystery structure of "solve for the location".

Sure, if you enforce your assumed structure, then it's as linear as you please. Otherwise, players are as free as ever to move where and when and as they choose.

It's this donning of blinders by DMs, this insistence that players must jump through some set of hoops because that -- not what the players choose to do -- is "the" adventure, that is the root of railroading.

Some players like it, want the DM to manipulate them into doing just what the DM wants them to do, don't want to come up with adventures on their own.

Like it or not, that is where it starts.

 

[Doug McCrae]

I'm a bit influenced by the literal meaning of the term myself. I tend to see rr more in terms of controlling the movement of the PCs thru the adventure, what pemerton refers to as 'plot authority' in post #231, ie control over whether the players can move to scene B, C, D or maybe just location B, C, D (in D&D, scenes and locations are usually the same, anyway), as opposed to whether the PCs can win in a particular scene.

So I see rr being more about the GM controlling movement and transportation, rather than determining the result of a combat, NPC dialogue or BBEG escape.

Admittedly winning or failing usually has a big influence on the nature of the next scene. If the PCs lose a fight, the next scene might be the PCs in prison, or new characters if it's a TPK.

 

[Reynard]

Imagine a simple 3-room dungeon: Room A has a door to Room B. Room B has a door to Room C.

Imagine a simple 3-location mystery: Location A has a clue to Location B. Location B has a clue to Room C.

Structurally those scenarios are identical*.

I would argue that there's a third kind -- an "event based" scenario in which event A is followed by event B which is followed by event C. Assuming the events are inevitable, it is a linear scenario.

But as I tried to show upthread, linear doesn't necessarily mean railroad. If the PCs still have the freedom to act, which includes the fredom to ignore or otherwise refuse to interact with the linear scenario elements -- be they location or event based, then it isn't a railroad. A train needs more than a track: it needs a conductor (the DM) and an engine (a prescribed pace of plot).

 

[Nifft]

Not looking for perfection. Looking for intuitive quality.

If you wanted just a term, you could call it "flapdoodling," give a precise definition, and there you go, one perfectly good piece of jargon.

Again, great points if we were making new stuff up out of whole cloth, but 100% useless when we're refining a term that already exists.

The point of using a term that invokes an analogy is to enhance understanding quickly. An important (I'd even say *the* important) part of BenBrown's definition is the issue of expectation - the players expect to have an effect, and don't.

Real world railroads are pretty darned obvious. So, you'll still have to explain the term frequently, as it fails to match a major operative portion of the definition.

In fact, the term "railroading" has been used to successfully communicate for quite a few years now, and pretty much everyone here knows that already, so you're going to need to be really persuasive to convince anyone otherwise. I suspect the DC is going to be ... impractical for you to hit.

If you're curious as to why it's been successful as a tool of communication, then let me remind you that analogies are not used exclusively to indicate similarities. They are also used to highlight differences.

- - -

For example, let's consider the commonplace analogy "like beating a dead horse", as applied to an unproductive argument. Are we saying that the argument under discussion has four legs? Are we saying that the argument under discussion was a mammal? Are we saying that the argument under discussion is sometimes eaten by French people?

No, that would be idiotic.

What we are doing is contrasting "beating a dead horse" with the more usual "beating a horse" (which may induce movement). There is no chance of provoking movement from a dead horse.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Ariosto]

This means that a dungeon crawl, no matter how linear, isn't really railroading, since there is no appearance of choice. It's still usually bad design, but it's not railroading.

Your sample base for that "usually" is pretty bizarre from my perspective of over 30 years of "dungeon crawling".

In the first place, an old-style expedition is not 'railroading' because it's not enforced by the DM. If it's 'linear', then that is not 'designed' by the DM. The players plan it. They go where they want to go, whether along this route or that through the underworld, or into the wilderness, or across town.

The decision is theirs, not the DM's. That's what makes it an adventure, in the sense of "a venture, project or undertaking, especially one that requires boldness or effort".

Not only is there "the appearance of" choice, but there are a myriad of choices, an incalculable number of possible paths through the environment, of histories for the players to make.

The only way I can see it as 'bad design" is if what you are really after is in fact just what you decry.

 

[Ariosto]

I firmly believe that railroading is in the eye of the railroadee

Fine. When someone calls something a railroad, just take it as stipulated that "if I were the railroadee" is to be understood.

Problem? Problem solved.

If it actually comes down to practical relevance in a game, the people in my circle are not likely to raise such quibbles.

"Unless there's an actual victim frothing and convulsing right here and now, we can't very well call this strychnine or that cyanide poison, can we?"

Yes, we can. We can say the same of alcohol, too, regardless of how much however many people like to consume it.

Is chocolate poisonous to dogs? Well, we are not speaking in terms of dogs.

 

[Ariosto]

Ergo... the way I see the term, no module can actually be a railroad. Some modules encourage railroading more than others, definitely, but fundamentally a railroad is something that happens at the table. No game inherently has a railroad structure, railroads only happen in the interpersonal interaction between GM and players.

Great.

"Railroad" now means nothing except "Bleh!" or "Yuck!" or ... I think we already have words enough to say "I don't like it".

Can't use it any more to refer to the Guaranteed TPK at the start of Vecna Lives!, without ... what?

I mean, people "misusing" the word is supposedly some sort of big, bad problem.

How can it be misused if it just means that So-and-So, as just a personal foible, finds something "icky"?

If other people happen to find the same things the same way, then we're right back where we started. Which is other people pointing fingers and accusing them of having "changed the definition" in order to be mean to all the wonderful new linear meta-jiggery thingamabobs.

 

[Desdichado]

Ariosto, you're being silly.

I've heard railroad used in that sense for years. I'm not making up some
"new, confusing" definitions. Your condescending insinuations that I (and obryn, or whomever) are impediments to conversation at every turn are both false and insulting.

Why don't you cut it out.

 

[Ariosto]

There wasn't a lot of discussion about railroading before the sandbox crowd got involved.

There wasn't a freaking game "before the sandbox crowd got involved". The "sandbox crowd" invented it. They had no need to talk about 'sandbox', though, because that's just a newfangled euphemism for what they called a 'campaign'.