"Railroading" is just a pejorative term for...

[pemerton]

The "wing it" element of running a status quo setting may include going off the edges of the map, but more importantly, in my experience, it's about the setting reacting to what the adventurers are doing.

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To use an actual play example

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I can't posrep you at the moment - but a nice actual play example of how a game can have interesting stuff happen without the GM having to railroad.

 

[pemerton]

Saying all control should rest in only one set of hands is equally unfair, no matter whose hands they are.

Who is saying this? In the actual play examples, and descriptions of approaches to play, give by me, by Chaochou, by The Shaman and Beginning of the End, the GM has also had control. But the GM's control is in framing the scene - whether that be by determining what is in the king's pocket and what the king's mood is, or by determining what the False Pope or chevalier are doing, or . . .

But the players get to decide how to engage the scene that the GM has framed. And the GM and players together than resolve the scene, using whatever mechanics are relevant - I think I use more structure action resolution for social scenes than The Shaman (4e skill challenges vs reaction roll) but there is still a lot of overlap in our approaches, as far as I can tell. We both have to play out the NPCs' responses in light of the dice rolls, and in light of the responses of the PCs to those responses.

I do wish there was a non-pejorative term for a DM nudging the action along in a non-invasive (or at least non-intrusive) manner that is acceptable to everyone at the table.

I call it scene framing. Plus action resolution. It requires being sensitive to what the players care about.

Contrary to what Celebrim said, if the thief player doesn't care one way or another about going to clear out the forest, but does care about whether or not his PC is the one who tried brazenly to rob the king in plain sight, then it is not a railroad to set up the encounter the way Beginning of the End described, provided that the actual robbery attempt is resolved, and its implications for the thief's reputation brought into play in the gameworld.

Like Chaochou said upthread, using NPCs response to force hard choices on the players, or to direct them into events that are engaging for them, isn't railroading. It's GMing!

 

[Lanefan]

Plus, at the beginning of the session, do a recap and conclude with, "at the end of the session, you all decided to do XYX"

Basically, remind them of the situation AND their decision. That would clue in the players as to what material you wrote, help them remember, and increase the chances they'll go for your one and only plot hook...

To which the first reply I'd likely hear would contain something like "let's think this through some more", "I've come up with a better idea", and-or "we decided that? Really?"

There's an online game log they can read anytime they like, it still doesn't help sometimes...

Lanefan

 

[Lanefan]

No, a plot is what you *want* to have happen. As you note, story is inevitible, and unfolding. You seem to be talking about events. Plot is a way of organizing events.

I am deeply suspicious of "plot" in an RPG for a number of reasons.

1. The GM's view of the future is hazy.
2. Plot is a modernist concept that presupposes thematic unity; aside from the question of whether your players are modernists, RPGs with their focus on text and freedom from artifical constraints of theme and consistency are a fundamentally postmodern form.
3. The GM does not know best.
4. The best goal is to have no goal.

Writers use plots to hang a story on. RPGs have a similar concept. However, the analog in an RPG is not a "plot," it's an adventure. The adventure is the framework for the story, including various decision points made by the players. The scenario is the structure, a starting point with an uncertain ending point.

Instead of plot, I think of "trajectories"... events that are likely if the PCs do nothing, or if they take one of several likely choices. But any trajectory can be altered in a second by a force generating new motion in another direction.

I storyboard ahead of time, by adventure; mostly thinking about

1. What do I have that I can run, and-or what am I willing to design on my own
2. What do I have in mind for an overarching backstory, if anything
3. What level will they need to be to go through what adventure
4. About how long will each adventure take in real-world time
5. Can I string any of these adventures together into coherent series

Then I sit back and watch it all fall apart as the months and years go by.

Lan-"but at least I'm storyboarded out to 2015"-efan

 

[MichaelSomething]

There are other terms, like programmatic, linear, plot-driven, or event-driven scenarios, that adequately describe less freeform games in a non-pejorative sense. A traditional plot-driven game is more like a "highway" than a railroad; it does not start and stop according to the conductor's whim, and the possibility exists, however disasterous it may be, for the players to deviate from the course.

Now that I think of it, the most used term for it would be "adventure path" coined by the good folks of Paizo. They're proof that there is a strong (or at least working) market for adventure paths. Of course, Kingmaker shows that is some desire for the sandbox as well.

 

[The Shaman]

This wouldn't have been a case of the party being wrongfully accused. They would have been actually guilty of banditry, and so they had no way to prove their innocence. They were armed on the Prince's highways, stole property and were found in possession of said property. No evidence in their favor existed. Case closed.

If we're talking about a game with divination magic, then it may not be quite so cut-and-dried.

The adventurers may lack mundane evidence, but in exchange for submitting to a quest on behalf of the religion, a cleric may be able to offer magically-obtained evidence of the adventurers' veracity and innocence.

And if not, there's always bribery.

just because you wrote it down, doesn't mean your stuck with it. If the PCs rob a stranger on the road, you CAN change who that stranger is. It's not the same guy who's going to be murdered. Chain of consequences broken.

And in so doing, you render the player's choices meaningless.

For me this removes one of the reasons for running the setting the way I like to run it; this is why I think illusionism can be just as bad as railroading.

You can mention to the player proposing to rob this guy, that doing so could get him marked as a horse thief and cause him all sorts of trouble on whatever his current goal is. You're not saying no. You're just advising a probable outcome to a player, in case he didn't think of that.

I might call for an attribute or skill check which, if successful, offers a reminder of those consequences. The adventurer is still free to pursue whatever course of action the player wishes, but the choice is a better informed one.

Top that off with, MAKE SURE YOUR PCS HAVE TIME TO PURSUE THEIR GOALS.

Worth repeating.

If you're thief's not chaotic-stupid, he's robbing the king at this obvious important meeting because he's bored or because he NEVER gets to rob anybody.

Or because the thief gives in to an impulse when presented with a unique opportunity.

 

[Starfox]

I do wish there was a non-pejorative term for a DM nudging the action along in a non-invasive (or at least non-intrusive) manner that is acceptable to everyone at the table. In other words a term for a non-degenerative form of railroading...

I think the term for this is... Railroading. Only not in a bad way. Just as the text the OP commented on involved someone who had accepted the term railroading and made it his own. I think this is only a matter of time.

This is not the first time - I note that many political parties have names and/or symbols that were originally derogatorily. And words like Gay have been "cleaned" by being accepted by the gay community. This is a natural process.

 

[Celebrim]

If we're talking about a game with divination magic, then it may not be quite so cut-and-dried.

The adventurers may lack mundane evidence, but in exchange for submitting to a quest on behalf of the religion, a cleric may be able to offer magically-obtained evidence of the adventurers' veracity and innocence.

That might work in some campaign world, but by long standing and virtually world wide tradition, magically obtained evidence is not admissable in court on campaign world. This is certainly true of the 'Free Cities' where something resembling a modern belief in civil and natural rights exists. The reasons are quite similar to the reasons the results of lie detector tests aren't admissable in court:

1) Basically, you only have the word of the spellcaster that the evidence he presents is true. Except in a few theocracies dominated by a single sect and similar situations, this isn't considered sufficient.
2) The results are too easy to fake. A charlatan could easily use illusions or simply a bit of performance to appear to be performing 'divinations'.
3) The tests may be quite accurate, but they are most innaccurate precisely in the case when the most accuracy is needed. The powerful and the skillful can find the means to evade most divination tests, and it is precisely from these that society most needs to defend itself.

And if not, there's always bribery.

The particular magistrate in the city was virtually incorruptible, and the party lacked the resources to make a creditable bribe. Believe me, this wasn't an easy decision. If I'd thought a believable way out of the troubles existed that didn't involve the equivalent of divine intervention by the DM and wouldn't have conveyed to the party the idea that whatever they did, they were safe, because the almighty DM would take care of them, I wouldn't have taken the step I did. Likewise, if I'd thought for a second that the player understood what he was doing and that the group was experienced enough to handle that sort of game wrecking, I would have let it happen. It was a very extraordinary step for me to make. Normally I let the dice fall where they may.

After the session, I told the player what I had done and why, which was AFAIC an apology - because I don't take that step very often and I probably wouldn't take it at all with a more experienced group. But I've been playing the game longer than all six of my current players combined.

For me this removes one of the reasons for running the setting the way I like to run it; this is why I think illusionism can be just as bad as railroading.

I absolutely agree. My point wasn't that illusionism was less bad than railroading, but rather to start to demonstrate equivalence between illusionism and railroading.

 

[Celebrim]

just because you wrote it down, doesn't mean your stuck with it. If the PCs rob a stranger on the road, you CAN change who that stranger is. It's not the same guy who's going to be murdered. Chain of consequences broken.

If you start breaking chains of consequences in order to preserve your story goals, how is that any different than "railroading"? You can rationalize this to yourself by saying that you are doing it for the players own good, because it is the story that they would prefer to have, but isn't that exactly the same rationalization that a DM who is heavily railroading is making?

You can mention to the player proposing to rob this guy, that doing so could get him marked as a horse thief and cause him all sorts of trouble on whatever his current goal is. You're not saying no. You're just advising a probable outcome to a player, in case he didn't think of that.

Sure, I will do that from time to time. However, by intervening in the situation in this way, you putting yourself on very slippery ground. Sure, you won't be "saying no", but you aren't as far away from railroading as you seem to think when you say to a player, "You don't want to do that." or "Your character wouldn't want to do that." In my case, explaining the situation to the player would have been functionally equivalent to saying, "If you do that, I will see to it that you die." I don't see that as being really different than saying, "No." Asking a character to make a choice under duress isn't giving them real freedom and real choices. It's saying, "See, you can either do what I want you to do and go along with my story, or else I can make things really hard on you, understand?" That's a railroad, and you'd recognize it as such if it was written into a module.

In the scenario with the king (gods, back to that again), the other PCs don't get involved, and the thief is detected, he's probably going to run. let him. he just ran off camera, with guards in pursuit. Now return to the party and don't get back to the thief for the rest of the adventure.

Also a railroad. Seriously, "step off your appointed stage and you don't get any screen time"? That's about the most diabolical and dastardly railroading I've ever heard suggested. That would be one of the few things that would tempt me to do something I've never done in my history of gaming, walk out in the middle of a session.

I'm all for shuffling game content if it means keeping the adventure going in the direction the players wanted and fits with what material I have.

Right. Railroad.

Best thing to do is not railroad, but to simply let them move off camera and out of the session. When they learn that they don't get extra rewards and camera time for being impulsively disruptivee, they'll have more camera time.

The irony in that statement is so sharp that it makes me want to wince rather than make fun of you.

 

[Janx]

And in so doing, you render the player's choices meaningless.

For me this removes one of the reasons for running the setting the way I like to run it; this is why I think illusionism can be just as bad as railroading.
Quote:

I disagree.

Celebrim already had a chain of stuff planned for this guy. Who happened to be on the road, and happened to be the ONE guy the PCs chose to rob, without knowing who he is.

If its going to cause such a mess, swap the guy out. It's not that big a freaking deal.

The PCs are still horse thieves, and they still have a horse, and there's still a guy going to cry to the cops.

The GM-crime isn't swapping some stuff out because it invalidates stuff so bad.

The GM-crime MIGHT be having so much hinge on an NPC in advance (possible in a sandbox). You shouldn't know so much about this guy. Him getting murdered, and or standing up for the PCs in the future is something you decide to do in the FUTURE to instigate some events for the PC.

Part of this may be confusing because I'm not sure if Celebrim is relaying a point in the past where the PC COULD have robbed an NPC and how it would have screwed up everything (because to him its already happened).

That's a horse of a different color. Of course playing what if they PCs had done X will screw up everything.

But in the present, that can't happen unless your adventure notes say it does. In which case, if the PCs are about to throw off your adventure unintentionally, shift some stuff around. Because to THEM they don't know or care about this stranger on a horse. The relationship of the stranger to future events doesn't exist.

Being unwilling to decouple this stranger from being the same man who gets murdered for the sake of keeping things going the way the PCs want is akin to a DM refusing to accept alternative decisions by the PCs to get out of a problem (a prime example of railroading).

Steadfast adherance to your notes is a GM-crime that generally leads to railroading. While I don't consider it railroading to do as Shaman says and keep the stranger as the same person, I do consider it an inflexibility to adapt to keep the players going in the direction they want to go. Which is presumably not to get caught or TPK.


If you've got an adventure outline, this horse robbery does not HAVE to cascade out of control. It should still have some impact on the world. But sticking to your notes is in the same league as assuming that pick-pocketing the king results in TPK. It doesn't HAVE to spiral out of control unless you the GM decide it does.