Why I Dislike the term Railroading

[BenBrown]

The rules did not stipulate a category of "dramatic reasons" to move pieces, switch cards, change the way dice landed, and so on, in Rail Baron or The Russian Campaign, or other games.

Neither did they in miniatures rules sets, such as Chainmail.

Neither did they in D&D.

original D&D didn't have rules for a lot of stuff.

AD&D1 had rules for stuff that nobody ever used because the rules sucked.

What was written in the rulebooks was not the whole of D&D, and still is not.

By the way, the current "game called D&D" as you so cleverly backhand it, is no more conducive to my style of play than AD&D or original D&D. Probably less so, to be honest.

 

[pemerton]

The rules did not stipulate a category of "dramatic reasons" to move pieces, switch cards, change the way dice landed, and so on, in Rail Baron or The Russian Campaign, or other games.

Neither did they in miniatures rules sets, such as Chainmail.

Neither did they in D&D.

Gygax included some rooms in Castle Greyhawk, such as the Fraz-Urb'luu room or (I think) the trapped godlings room, not because the rules of the game (eg random tables) dictated that they be there, nor because pre-existing ingame logic dictated that they be there, but because he knew that particular players would enjoy taking their PCs through these rooms.

To me, this looks like a pretty clear case of "altering things" for dramatic reasons. But to me it doesn't look remotely like railroading. I'm not sure if you think of this as a standard part of "campaign play" or not - but I think there is a pretty big difference between a campaign where most of the ingame elements are placed using the rules for terrain and dungeon generation plus the application of ingame logic, and a campaign where most of the ingame elements are placed because they will appeal to particular players of particular PCs.

Oversimplifying a little, but not too much: The former is the sort of game that rulebooks like Modlvay/Cook Basic/Expert, AD&D 1st ed DMG, the Wilderness Survival Guide, and 1980s White Dwarf and Dragon taught me to play (I then discovered that Rolemaster delivered this sort of game in a way that better suited my tastes). The latter is the sort of game that rulebooks like 4e DMG and DMG2, HeroQuest, The Dying Earth and Burning Wheel have taught me to play. In my view, these are pretty different rulebooks teaching pretty different games.

Now you seem to be a big stickler for "reading the rulebooks". Did I read the rulebooks right or wrong? Did Gygax, in placing the Fraz-Urb'luu room, follow the rules that he wrote? If the whole campaign is nothing but Fraz-Urb'luu rooms, but I'm still using the AD&D character build and action resolution mechanics, am I doing it wrong?

 

[pemerton]

If turning away from the tomb means one can go on playing, choosing one's moves on the "game board" of the world, then it's not a railroad.

If it's always Hobson's choice -- the DM's chosen 'adventure' or nothing -- then there's always a little choo-choo ride, no matter what the rest of the scenario is like.

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.

When you talk about it being the GM's adventure or nothing - or about the GM insisting, or manipulating - I'm not sure what you mean.

If the GM rings up the players the day before the schedule session and says, "I've just bought this new module for level 12 characters - turn up tomorrow with a level 12 PC and I'll run you through it" this is a case of teh GM insisting on running his adventure, but I don't see the railroad. Railroading is an approach to play, and this isn't an instance of play. It's an instance of preparing to play.

On the other hand, imagine that in the course of a session the PCs learn about a secret cult that is the power behind the throne, and the players decide that it would be really cool for their PCs to join that cult. If the GM says "No, you can't", or kills off the PCs (literally or through level drains and similar penalties) via alignment/blue bolts from the sky mechanics, then I can see a railroad. This is the GM interfering with the players' agency in the course of play.

You also talk about the players being able to keep on playing, and to move where and when and as they choose. I'm having trouble following this too - of course the players are free (unless the GM kidnaps them!) but in most games the PCs aren't free to do whatever they please (eg they can't jump to the moon unless they're wearing pretty special boots of springing). If you mean that the players are free to specify actions for their PCs - well, that can be consistent with railroading, if the GM contrives things so that all actions have the same result - but the absence can be consistent with no railroading - eg if a monster casts a dominate spell then the GM gets to specify the PC's actions, but this doesn't mean the game has become a railroad.

I think I prefer the accounts of railroading given by Doug and BegginingOfTheEnd upthread - they fit pretty well with my own experience and intuitions.

EDIT: The main reason for stressing the player vs PC thing is that an account of railroading which equates player freedom with PC scope of action in the gameworld is already making assumptions about playstyle, and the relationship between mechanics and playstyle, that aren't even true of all D&D games, let alone all RPGs.

 

[Beginning of the End]

I would disagree with this on the grounds that "invisible railroading" or "illusionism" still has a very real effect on gameplay, and those effects are very similar to and arise from the same root causes as visible railroading.

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

You might try reading the thread. It's not that hard and it's a lot easier than me re-posting the same crap every three pages because you can't be bothered.

But to sum up: The net result of railroading is that player impact on the scenario is dampened or eliminated. It's true, as I said in the post you're responding to, that there is a difference between invisible and visible railroading. But I think that difference, while significant, is still minor compared to the much larger commonalities created by limiting the potential playspace.

If you want an analogy, consider The Truman Story: Things clearly changed when Truman figured out that his entire life was being staged. (When the invisible railroad became a visible railroad.) But that doesn't mean that his life wasn't being meaningfully impacted before the railroad-analogy became visible. (His ambitions to travel the world had been quashed and his entire personal life was warped.)

There's also the commonality in how railroaded scenarios are designed. The guys practicing invisible railroading are better at keeping the servants out of sight (so to speak), but they're using the same basic techniques. Robust non-linear scenarios, on the other hand, are fundamentally different in their design.

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.

Ariosto does seem to be taking this all a little personally.

But it's also true that people have been using the term "railroad" to refer to published adventures for decades now. The use of the term as such is just as prevalent as the use of the term to describe behavior at the actual gaming table. (Do a search on "Dragonlance" and "railroad" if you don't believe me.)

So I think artificially trying to slice out that half of the term's meaning is counter-productive. I'm more interested in understanding why so many people are using the term that way than I am in claiming that they're all using it wrong.

... so apparently you think the "sandbox crowd" == the inventors of D&D.

History tells us that the inventors of D&D were the tactical wargame crowd.

Now do you see why what you're saying is rather confusing?

Oh, c'mon. I'm trying to figure out which of your unexamined premises is more ridiculous:

(1) That Arneson and Gygax couldn't play tactical wargames and ALSO run sandbox campaigns.

(2) That Arneson and Gygax played D&D as if it were a tactical wargame and nothing more.

Or the deep implication that people couldn't run sandbox campaigns until the term "sandbox" was invented. Which is highly questionable since the term was specifically adopted in the tabletop RPG industry to describe a type of campaign that had explicitly existed since the 1970's. (i.e., the Wilderlands)

I think we could all work a little harder to read the other guy's post with a view of understanding their viewpoint rather than distorting their words through a prism of our own prejudices or a misguided faith in their bad intentions.

 

[pemerton]

But it's also true that people have been using the term "railroad" to refer to published adventures for decades now. The use of the term as such is just as prevalent as the use of the term to describe behavior at the actual gaming table.

This is true of me - I describe some adventures (eg many of the Planescape ones that I've encountered) as railroads. I also, in this very thread, have been one of those who argue that railroading is mostly about the actual play at the table!

How do I reconcile this apparent contradiction? By making much the same move the Forge-ites do when they get caught using GNS to label games rather than actual play. That is, in calling a module a railroad, what I think I'm doing is saying that I can't see any way of playing this module, as written, without the GM railroading pretty strongly by (i) handwaving over action resolution mechanics at what, for most players, are at least presenting themselves as crucial moments of play, and/or (ii) dictating to the players what their loyalties and thematic concerns shall be.

Modules that don't do that include some classic site-based ones - a lot of people think of KotB or other D&D classics, but my personal favourites are some of the Shadow World and other ICE modules. These give the GM stats, NPCs, a spread of motivations and so - in short, a situation - into which the players then step. More recent modules that I'm familiar with, and that are neither site-based nor railroading, are the Penumbra modules for 3E. That is, I can easily see how they can be run more-or-less as written without the GM having to force the game in either of ways (i) or (ii) identified above.

 

[Ariosto]

I think you're the only one in the thread who thinks D&D grew out of "sandboxing".

I think that the contents of the booklets are plain for anyone to see. I know what I, and everyone I know of, produced by following those instructions. I know what I read in FFC, and TSR, and TD, and elsewhere.

Draw up dungeon levels beneath a castle (ruined or otherwise). Map the area surrounding that, and the village, town or city closest to the dungeons. What lies beyond is the Wilderness. It actually includes castles and towns as well as wild land.

The players start with a blank hex map, and via exploration discover the lay of the land. In this way they can select sites on which to build their strongholds. The construction of a castle, tower or whatever can take place at any time the player/character wishes (assuming sufficient funds).

"Each player who builds should draw an extra set of plans and specifics for the referee. Surprises, intakings, sieges and so on can take place."

Right there, I think, is one reason the 'sandbox' term seemed suitable. There's a lot of fun to be had in building castles and knocking them down! The same holds in general for projects that make a mark on the world.

Specialists and men at arms can be found and hired. An alchemist, or 100 longbowmen or light horsemen?

Chainmail is quite suitable for medieval battles, using scale factors similar to those in WRG 'Ancients' rules of the time (e.g., a 1:20 model:man ratio). D&D rounds out the set of battle and siege rules with aerial and naval combat. There are a number of fine later rules sets for battles as well.

The referee will make available information, misinformation and legends, usually obtainable by making the rounds of taverns and inns and spreading gold.

Building a stronghold in the wilderness (as opposed to a town) frees a player from personal upkeep costs. It also allows clearing the countryside of monsters and so establishing a barony. The baron gets tax revenue, and can also profit from investments in the territory.

 

[Ariosto]

To me, this looks like a pretty clear case of "altering things" for dramatic reasons.

It was not for nothing that I wrote:

I reckon that how many people do this or that is likely to depend on just what you mean by "dramatic reasons".

So the dice determine whether or not I succeeded at opening the safe, but not whether or not I succeeded at finding the incriminating documents that are my real concern.

That's a classic! The "quantum documents" soon raise all sorts of questions. For instance, why am I rolling to find the documents? Isn't that a task? Don't I have a 'real concern' beyond that?

If the documents are in the safe, then one can get the documents by opening the safe. The basic idea is that one might like to make a role-playing game of finding out where the documents are, you see.

Dice are tools. That is all (but it's quite a bit, if one cares to know what odds one is actually producing).

When you talk about it being the GM's adventure or nothing - or about the GM insisting, or manipulating - I'm not sure what you mean.

It's pretty simple. When my friend K. is DM, he's got an 'adventure' planned, and we can either go through it or play something other than D&D. If we say, "No, we're not going to go get this thing for that guy" -- or whatever the 'plot' may be -- and go off to try something else, then he's just going to close up shop. He's not prepared for that.

(We have not put him to the test, mind you! That's just the word, and sometimes we'll end a D&D session earlier than expected because he has run out of material.)

I think we might be able to retrain him to let us pick from open options at the end of one session, so he could prepare to run our adventure in the next. The trouble is that he's one of those "epic story teller" types (for all that he's the only one who can keep the story straight).

That's cool. I would prefer more of a real game, but it's just an entertaining pastime, part of the social gathering. We'll do different things other times.

What does it mean not to insist? Let go, let the players jump through the hoops or not, and there's no place to which to build rails. It's just a game, you're the ref, the players can play.

What's manipulation? It's a whole host of techniques, with 'railroading' being an extreme. It's how you get players back on track.

There's no need if there are no tracks. There's no need for tracks without a destination.

Of course, some players want the destination, the tracks, the whole enchilada.

You also talk about the players being able to keep on playing, and to move where and when and as they choose.

Yes. Who else but "the players" (as you italicized it) should be playing? What I wrote was:

If turning away from the tomb means one can go on playing, choosing one's moves on the "game board" of the world, then it's not a railroad.

In the tournament, you've got no other option -- at least if you want to stay in the tournament. The Tomb is all there is. Leaving the scenario basically means leaving the game. (I suppose a DM might have been allowed to run something else had that actually happened with a whole table of players).

That's just SOP for tournaments. They're about presenting teams with the same battery of tests.

In an old-style campaign, you would not have been forced to quest for the tomb in the first place. If you nonetheless came, saw, and said, "Forget this!", then you could head off whichever way you pleased. That's what those hex-maps were for.

On the other hand, there might be "commuter express line" occasions in a campaign. Then again, what one guy might spring at will, another DM would instead attach to a specific location or item.

The idea, always, is to present a fun game. Different people have different ideas of what makes a fun game for them.

 

[Doug McCrae]

In hopes of adding to the confusion, here's another possible meaning.

Instead of a threshold, railroad is seen as one direction on a continuum, the other direction being referred to as sandbox. Railroad means less player freedom, sandbox means more. There is, probably, no such thing as a perfect railroad or a perfect sandbox in actual play. Neither railroading nor sandboxing is inherently good or bad, they are just tools to be used by individual gaming groups, and adjusted to taste.

I accept that this goes against the most popular definition of railroad, which is that of a threshold, going beyond that threshold being a bad thing.

This definition fits with the idea of railroading not being inherently bad but rather a sometimes useful 'push' from the GM to move the player characters in a direction that makes for a more enjoyable game. Also known as Awesome Town. It is, I think, close to the sense in which evileeyore uses the term.

As has been said, this actually fits the literal meaning of the analogy very well, better than the negative sense in fact. There is nothing bad about railway lines, they are a useful tool for getting where you want to go.

 

[Doug McCrae]

This is true of me - I describe some adventures (eg many of the Planescape ones that I've encountered) as railroads. I also, in this very thread, have been one of those who argue that railroading is mostly about the actual play at the table!

Yeah, if one is looking for a term with which to criticise, or even just describe, the scene in Whispers of the Vampire's Blade where the PCs are chasing the carriage, I can't think of a better, more succinct, term than railroad. The PCs can actually catch the carriage, and the sorcerer NPC driving it, but the BBEG, the titular vampire who is sleeping inside when the encounter starts, must escape. (He does so by turning into a bat or mist.)

The first Dragonlance module, DL1 Dragons of Despair, has a map where the PCs can, at first, go anywhere, but as the adventure goes on, draconian armies advance pushing the PCs towards Xak Tsaroth, the dungeon where the scenario culminates. Railroad? I dunno, but it's definitely a major application of pressure on the PCs.

Event 7: The Dragonarmies March. Just after
dusk on the fifth game night, the dragonarmies
begin to march and conquer all the lands
to the south; every 4 hours thereafter, one
encounter area falls into their hands. Treat
areas that fall as Dragonlands (as area 43). In
order to fall, an area must either border area
43 to begin with or have bordered a captured
area in the previous hour. The general trend of
captured areas should direct the PCs toward
Xak Tsaroth (area 44).

PS Thanks for the explanation of task and conflict resolution - very helpful.

 

[Doug McCrae]

It's pretty simple. When my friend K. is DM, he's got an 'adventure' planned, and we can either go through it or play something other than D&D. If we say, "No, we're not going to go get this thing for that guy" -- or whatever the 'plot' may be -- and go off to try something else, then he's just going to close up shop. He's not prepared for that.

Is that what you would call a railroad, when the GM only has one adventure prepared?