Mouseferatu
Hero
I haven't been gaming much lately. In fact, I'm not sure I've played more than half a dozen times in 2011. (And if I have, it wasn't by much.) That's partly why I also haven't done one of these columns in a while. Sorry, Morrus. 
But I have spent a lot of time thinking about gaming because, let's be honest, that's what gamers do when they aren't gaming. And I've to a conclusion. It's not a new conclusion, as such things go, but I've come to it from a new direction.
There are, apparently, a lot of bad DMs out there.
This isn't news to anyone who's gamed for a while. We all have our share of stories. We also all have our share of different criteria; I'm willing to bet that every one of us--or at least almost every one--has at at least one DM that we consider awful, but that someone else on ENWorld would consider great.
Again, nothing new. But what's hammered this home for me a lot in recent years is the plethora of people who automatically assume that "plot" in an RPG must automatically equal "railroad."
No, I'm not accusing those people of being bad DMs. But I'm willing to bet they've had a few.
Because in the hands of a bad (or just inexperienced) DM, yeah, plot often equals railroad. The DM knows exactly what's going to happen, and when, and by gods, the PCs will play their parts exactly as scripted! If they don't, they're either forced into doing so, or they're punished for not doing so.
And yes, that's bad. If that's been your primary experience with plot, I can see why you'd automatically equate plot to railroading. But it's not the only way to run a plot-heavy D&D campaign.
A skilled DM runs a plot flexibly, in reaction to what the PCs do. Now, I'm not talking about a sandbox game, where the DM has no story in mind to guide the PCs. I'm talking about a middle ground, where the DM puts specific events in motion, but without a roadmap as to how the PCs are going to react. The DM knows what'll happen if the PCs fail, and he might have an idea as to how they'll solve it. But so long as he doesn't force them to correspond to that idea, it's not railroading.
Some people will still call it that. I disagree. Assuming the PCs will get involved in the story isn't railroading any more than assuming they'll stick to the passages and rooms in a dungeon (as opposed to spending the entire campaign digging through the rock with a pickaxe) isn't railroading. There's a certain level of assumed cooperation in RPGs, and it involves meeting in the middle.
Or, to put it another way, "sandbox" and "railroad" aren't binary terms. They're a continuum, and only become problematic at either extreme. If I say "No, you can't go left instead of right" to the party, that's potentially railroading. If, however, there are consequences to going left instead of right--and if said consequences make sense in the game world, and don't exist solely because I'm trying to shepherd the party through my own story--that is not a railroad. Similarly, a "sandbox" game may include the freedom to do almost anything, but it doesn't necessarily promise an absence of consequences for those actions. If it does, then the game swiftly loses any and all sense of verisimilitude. To me, at least, utterly aimless is just as bad as utterly railroaded.
And yes, that means means that a DM's motive plays into the question, as well as his actions. Consequences that make sense in the larger campaign might not equate to a railroad, while consequences put in place solely to force the PCs back on script do--even if the consequences, on the surface, look the same.
Tricky, ain't it? I'm not saying that pure motives cancel out bad DMing. I'm just saying that one needs to look at pattern and intent (as best as can be inferred) before judging whether a given instance is a sign of railroading or not. It's one of the reasons I prefer only playing in games run by friends; I can more easily judge that sort of thing.
Sure, I could avoid the issue entirely by only playing in, or running, sandbox campaigns. But here's the thing. I don't like sandbox campaigns.
(Mandatory disclaimer: If you do like sandbox games, that's fine. I'm not making any sort of declaration about the "wrong way to play." I'm explaining my preference.)
See, at the end of the day, I prefer the collaborative story elements of RPGs to everything else. What I remember, when a campaign is long over and done with, is how interesting the plot twists were, how cool the characters were in a roleplaying/dialogue sense. I do not reminisce about how cool the magic items were, or which powers I got to use, and the only time I fondly reminisce about a particular combat is if someone did something really creative or funny, or if it was a real nail-biter of a fight that also had a major impact on the story. (In fact, I want all the combats, or at least almost all of them, to advance the story. I could happily play in a campaign where less than 5% of the combats were random encounters.)
Now, lots of people will argue that the story is what the PCs make of it. And to an extent, I agree. I despise feeling railroaded, and the most well thought-out story in the world won't change that. But by the same token, I despise feeling aimless, like the DM is just coasting without any notion of what's happening outside the PCs' immediate actions. I understand that some people like the appeal of the "let's go out, find a dungeon, and explore it" game, with nothing bigger happening. But for me, that doesn't scratch the itch. I don't want to feel like my character is helpless to do anything but play through pre-arranged steps--but I do want to feel like my character is part of a story, not just a world. I want the things we do to matter. I want there to be consequences, not merely to our actions and successes, but to our inaction and our failures.
I want plot twists. I want mysteries. I want surprises. I want recurring NPCs that we come to care about, and recurring villains we come to hate. I want to walk away from the table talking about how damn cool that plot twist was, and I can't believe it turned out that Father Reginald and the Dragon Prince were actually in cahoots. I don't mind fighting Generic Orcs 1-16, or Generic Skeletons 8-12. But if it's a lich? A dragon? A mind flayer? I want it to have not just a name, but a personality, and a plan. I want it to be doing something other than serving as the end-boss to a dungeon, and I want whatever it's doing to have far-reaching consequences.
To me--and again, I stress to me--rolling dice is a means, not an end. I want to engage in interesting combats and make difficult skill checks, absolutely, but I want to do them because it advances the plot, not because it's fun to roll dice. It's a role-playing game, yes, but for me the "game" part of that serves primarily as a foundation for the role-playing--and, even though it's not part of the name, story-telling--part. I don't want, and in fact don't enjoy, the game experience without those.
Similarly, I feel that the mechanics are a tool for playing the character, not the purpose of the character. In fact, as much as I still love designing for both 4E and 3E/Pathfinder, I don't actually want to run either just at this moment. They're both fantastic games, and I'll happily play either or both, but in terms of running a game, I'm ready to spend some time in a much more mechanics-light system for a while. I want to remind myself of how to do the collaborative storytelling without worrying about the mechanics any more often than I absolutely have to.
(Another mandatory disclaimer: I'm not suggesting you can't do that with PF or 4E. Of course you can. I just want to try it without the heavy mechanics for a while.)
RPGs and novels are very different things. One shouldn't try to run a campaign like a novel, and one shouldn't try to write a novel like one runs a campaign. The same is true of a TV series. But...
When a campaign is over, when all is said and done, I want to feel like the story and characters were interesting enough in their own right that one could write a novel, or a few seasons of TV, based on the same basic skeleton. Not detail for detail, not chapter for chapter, but based on the core ideas.
And that requires plot. Not railroading, not script, but plot.
Yes, it's pure preference. Yes, many of you are reading this with abject horror and thinking "I never want to game with him!" And that's fine. I'm not suggesting you have to want to game the way I do. What I am suggesting is this:
That, if this isn't your playstyle, you say "That's not my playstyle," rather than lumping it in and dismissing it with "railroading." That, if you don't like this style and have been thinking of it as railroading, you take a moment to consider whether it's because of poor experiences that might not be representative of the playstyle in question. Because I'm willing to bet that, in most cases, a skilled DM who knows how to balance plot with player freedom of choice might just change your mind.
But I have spent a lot of time thinking about gaming because, let's be honest, that's what gamers do when they aren't gaming. And I've to a conclusion. It's not a new conclusion, as such things go, but I've come to it from a new direction.
There are, apparently, a lot of bad DMs out there.
This isn't news to anyone who's gamed for a while. We all have our share of stories. We also all have our share of different criteria; I'm willing to bet that every one of us--or at least almost every one--has at at least one DM that we consider awful, but that someone else on ENWorld would consider great.
Again, nothing new. But what's hammered this home for me a lot in recent years is the plethora of people who automatically assume that "plot" in an RPG must automatically equal "railroad."
No, I'm not accusing those people of being bad DMs. But I'm willing to bet they've had a few.
Because in the hands of a bad (or just inexperienced) DM, yeah, plot often equals railroad. The DM knows exactly what's going to happen, and when, and by gods, the PCs will play their parts exactly as scripted! If they don't, they're either forced into doing so, or they're punished for not doing so.
And yes, that's bad. If that's been your primary experience with plot, I can see why you'd automatically equate plot to railroading. But it's not the only way to run a plot-heavy D&D campaign.
A skilled DM runs a plot flexibly, in reaction to what the PCs do. Now, I'm not talking about a sandbox game, where the DM has no story in mind to guide the PCs. I'm talking about a middle ground, where the DM puts specific events in motion, but without a roadmap as to how the PCs are going to react. The DM knows what'll happen if the PCs fail, and he might have an idea as to how they'll solve it. But so long as he doesn't force them to correspond to that idea, it's not railroading.
Some people will still call it that. I disagree. Assuming the PCs will get involved in the story isn't railroading any more than assuming they'll stick to the passages and rooms in a dungeon (as opposed to spending the entire campaign digging through the rock with a pickaxe) isn't railroading. There's a certain level of assumed cooperation in RPGs, and it involves meeting in the middle.
Or, to put it another way, "sandbox" and "railroad" aren't binary terms. They're a continuum, and only become problematic at either extreme. If I say "No, you can't go left instead of right" to the party, that's potentially railroading. If, however, there are consequences to going left instead of right--and if said consequences make sense in the game world, and don't exist solely because I'm trying to shepherd the party through my own story--that is not a railroad. Similarly, a "sandbox" game may include the freedom to do almost anything, but it doesn't necessarily promise an absence of consequences for those actions. If it does, then the game swiftly loses any and all sense of verisimilitude. To me, at least, utterly aimless is just as bad as utterly railroaded.
And yes, that means means that a DM's motive plays into the question, as well as his actions. Consequences that make sense in the larger campaign might not equate to a railroad, while consequences put in place solely to force the PCs back on script do--even if the consequences, on the surface, look the same.
Tricky, ain't it? I'm not saying that pure motives cancel out bad DMing. I'm just saying that one needs to look at pattern and intent (as best as can be inferred) before judging whether a given instance is a sign of railroading or not. It's one of the reasons I prefer only playing in games run by friends; I can more easily judge that sort of thing.
Sure, I could avoid the issue entirely by only playing in, or running, sandbox campaigns. But here's the thing. I don't like sandbox campaigns.
(Mandatory disclaimer: If you do like sandbox games, that's fine. I'm not making any sort of declaration about the "wrong way to play." I'm explaining my preference.)
See, at the end of the day, I prefer the collaborative story elements of RPGs to everything else. What I remember, when a campaign is long over and done with, is how interesting the plot twists were, how cool the characters were in a roleplaying/dialogue sense. I do not reminisce about how cool the magic items were, or which powers I got to use, and the only time I fondly reminisce about a particular combat is if someone did something really creative or funny, or if it was a real nail-biter of a fight that also had a major impact on the story. (In fact, I want all the combats, or at least almost all of them, to advance the story. I could happily play in a campaign where less than 5% of the combats were random encounters.)
Now, lots of people will argue that the story is what the PCs make of it. And to an extent, I agree. I despise feeling railroaded, and the most well thought-out story in the world won't change that. But by the same token, I despise feeling aimless, like the DM is just coasting without any notion of what's happening outside the PCs' immediate actions. I understand that some people like the appeal of the "let's go out, find a dungeon, and explore it" game, with nothing bigger happening. But for me, that doesn't scratch the itch. I don't want to feel like my character is helpless to do anything but play through pre-arranged steps--but I do want to feel like my character is part of a story, not just a world. I want the things we do to matter. I want there to be consequences, not merely to our actions and successes, but to our inaction and our failures.
I want plot twists. I want mysteries. I want surprises. I want recurring NPCs that we come to care about, and recurring villains we come to hate. I want to walk away from the table talking about how damn cool that plot twist was, and I can't believe it turned out that Father Reginald and the Dragon Prince were actually in cahoots. I don't mind fighting Generic Orcs 1-16, or Generic Skeletons 8-12. But if it's a lich? A dragon? A mind flayer? I want it to have not just a name, but a personality, and a plan. I want it to be doing something other than serving as the end-boss to a dungeon, and I want whatever it's doing to have far-reaching consequences.
To me--and again, I stress to me--rolling dice is a means, not an end. I want to engage in interesting combats and make difficult skill checks, absolutely, but I want to do them because it advances the plot, not because it's fun to roll dice. It's a role-playing game, yes, but for me the "game" part of that serves primarily as a foundation for the role-playing--and, even though it's not part of the name, story-telling--part. I don't want, and in fact don't enjoy, the game experience without those.
Similarly, I feel that the mechanics are a tool for playing the character, not the purpose of the character. In fact, as much as I still love designing for both 4E and 3E/Pathfinder, I don't actually want to run either just at this moment. They're both fantastic games, and I'll happily play either or both, but in terms of running a game, I'm ready to spend some time in a much more mechanics-light system for a while. I want to remind myself of how to do the collaborative storytelling without worrying about the mechanics any more often than I absolutely have to.
(Another mandatory disclaimer: I'm not suggesting you can't do that with PF or 4E. Of course you can. I just want to try it without the heavy mechanics for a while.)
RPGs and novels are very different things. One shouldn't try to run a campaign like a novel, and one shouldn't try to write a novel like one runs a campaign. The same is true of a TV series. But...
When a campaign is over, when all is said and done, I want to feel like the story and characters were interesting enough in their own right that one could write a novel, or a few seasons of TV, based on the same basic skeleton. Not detail for detail, not chapter for chapter, but based on the core ideas.
And that requires plot. Not railroading, not script, but plot.
Yes, it's pure preference. Yes, many of you are reading this with abject horror and thinking "I never want to game with him!" And that's fine. I'm not suggesting you have to want to game the way I do. What I am suggesting is this:
That, if this isn't your playstyle, you say "That's not my playstyle," rather than lumping it in and dismissing it with "railroading." That, if you don't like this style and have been thinking of it as railroading, you take a moment to consider whether it's because of poor experiences that might not be representative of the playstyle in question. Because I'm willing to bet that, in most cases, a skilled DM who knows how to balance plot with player freedom of choice might just change your mind.
