D&D 5E What does "Railroading" actually mean!? Discount Code on Page 8

[Umbran]

The mysterious stranger is just a grumpy old drunk. "Quests? What yer talken about? Gerraway you annoying young whippersnapper".

Subverting the trope merely to show the players they had made assumptions is not all that constructive, though. It feels like a "gotcha!" moment.

Subverting the trope to support a theme, or an interesting difference in overall plotline, however, can be really good stuff.

 

[FrogReaver]

I define railroading as any limitation set by the DM on player action, where the limitation is not implemented as a result of concrete, real-world ethics discussed with the players before the game begins*.

In a non-railroad game, the DM creates and describes a situation. The PCs describe how they react. If a gang of bugbears are kidnapping villagers as slaves, the PC have many choices: 1) defend the villagers, 2) launch a counterattack, 3) help the bugbears, 4) murder the bugbears and start their own slave trade, 5) go somewhere else in the world, 6) anything else the PCs can image.

In my mind, a story with many paths is still a railroad. A railroad, after all, can have many destinations.




* Telling a player not to rape an NPC, is not railroading.

Issue is: What made the bugbears attack in the first place? Answer: the Dm has them attack.

in some sense you railroaded your players into having to deal with bugbears. That’s not how I would use the term but that’s how you and many others are.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Many good adventures have a highly specific premise. Indeed, my experience is that adventures that start with a specific premise tend to work better than "You meet in a pub"-type campaigns. But you need player buy-in, either a generalized "any premise" buy-in (which you will likely get from groups you've played with for a long time), or quick summary of the premise (which can actually often lead to more interesting characters).

The tavern situation is an actual railroad, on the other hand.

My standard "you meet in a pub" start is "you're all in a pub when two molotov cocktails come flying in through the window. What do you do?s" Why there are molotovs has been different every time - but it works to get the group together and pissed at the attackers who at the very least ruined their drinks. And generally kidnapped some of the village (there's a reward on offer for getting them back). Also it gives them a reputation with an even bigger one on offer. (They get some time to establish where they are in the pub and why they are officially there - and I use that to see which NPCs to target).

With adventures rather than DMs, people typically refer to adventures as railroads when they don't allow the PCs to make choices where it seems like there really would be choices. Especially if NPCs, magical barriers or the like enforce that lack of choice.

This. The DM doesn't have to directly say "you will do this" - they can very much use the in game setting to force only one option.

A prime example is a wandering monster table. It doesn't matter which route you take into town. The DM rolls on the same table to see what you encounter.

The point about the original wandering monster checks was that they were a pacing tool to prevent turtling. The DM would roll a wandering monster check once every IIRC ten minutes of in character time. Which meant that if you turtled up, moved slowly, and checked every five foot square of the dungeon for traps you'd face far more wandering monster checks than if you moved swiftly and confidently, trying not to give the enemy time to group up.

Wandering monsters used as designed are not automatically railroady. But take the game out of the dungeon and the calculus changes.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Get out!

No, seriously, the funny thing is that you've hit on the base of my fear - anxiety, maybe. I'm worried that, by saying to the players "your choice is these three different environments and each of them has a different set of challenges which you can approach anyway you like." is ... railroading, because I'm not giving them a completely free choice? Does ... that make sense?

Yes, it makes sense.

When I write an adventure, I often map out several likely routes though the story (aided by knowing my players and hence the sorts of things they are likely to come up with). I wouldn't normally tell them how many options where available though, unless it was in the context of discussing options with an NPC. And I have still had occasions where they have decided on a different course of action and had to cobble things together. I kind of think of it as like the scene in The Wrong Trousers where the DM is frantically trying to put down rails in font of the path of the locomotive.

 

[WayOfTheFourElements]

Issue is: What made the bugbears attack in the first place? Answer: the Dm has them attack.

in some sense you railroaded your players into having to deal with bugbears. That’s not how I would use the term but that’s how you and many others are.

Except the player's don't. The players can not deal with the bugbears. They can simply leave them to pillage and enslave the village. No problem there. My players, for example, would probably decide not to get involved.

There is a difference between world-building and railroading. Playing the NPCs is not railroading.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Subverting the trope merely to show the players they had made assumptions is not all that constructive, though. It feels like a "gotcha!" moment.

Sure it is, it discourages the players from making those metagame driven assumptions. And it's not like anything really bad happens to the players as a consequence.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Except the player's don't. The players can not deal with the bugbears. They can simply leave them to pillage and enslave the village.

That leads to a slightly different slant on things. I know my players well enough to be absolutely confident that if I presented them with a village under attack from monsters they would go rushing to the rescue. I don't need to map out other options because I know what they will do.

 

[prabe]

Subverting the trope merely to show the players they had made assumptions is not all that constructive, though. It feels like a "gotcha!" moment.

Subverting the trope to support a theme, or an interesting difference in overall plotline, however, can be really good stuff.

In my case, not so much either a "gotcha" or a thematic point as an indicator they shouldn't expect cliches (which ironically gives me more leeway to use cliches later, I find). Probably more in the way of an "interesting difference."

 

[FrogReaver]

Except the player's don't. The players can not deal with the bugbears. They can simply leave them to pillage and enslave the village. No problem there. My players, for example, would probably decide not to get involved.

There is a difference between world-building and railroading. Playing the NPCs is not railroading.

One option of Dealing with the bugbears is ignoring them. That they have choices in how they deal with them isn’t the important part. It’s that you railroaded them into having to deal with them in the first place.

*note I tend to agree with the definition you propose here - that placing an obstacle in the PCs path doesn’t of itself constitute railroading.

 

[prabe]

That leads to a slightly different slant on things. I know my players well enough to be absolutely confident that if I presented them with a village under attack from monsters they would go rushing to the rescue. I don't need to map out other options because I know what they will do.

While you might be able to expect them to go rescue the village from the bugbears, it'd probably be wise to prepare for more than one approach to doing so, based on your players and their characters.