D&D General Why defend railroading?

[Crimson Longinus]

[Citation needed.]

Seriously. Players that can't make informed choices and learn from the consequences thereof aren't playing a game; they're dancing to your tune. It's not a "thoughtcrime," it's just disingenuous, leading the players on, making them believe they (as players) are doing something they aren't.

And I dunno about you, but despite being a fairly smart person myself, I absolutely could not fool my players like this forever. Absolutely, positively could not. The truth would leak out eventually. And as soon as it does, all your claims about how it "will not affect the experience of the players one bit" go right out the window.

No one is being fooled, the players in fact know that the game world is made up by the GM. Fretting over what exact moment a thing was made up and did the GM change their mind at some point is utterly pointless.

 

[Cadence]

[Citation needed.]

Seriously. Players that can't make informed choices and learn from the consequences thereof aren't playing a game; they're dancing to your tune. It's not a "thoughtcrime," it's just disingenuous, leading the players on, making them believe they (as players) are doing something they aren't.

And I dunno about you, but despite being a fairly smart person myself, I absolutely could not fool my players like this forever. Absolutely, positively could not. The truth would leak out eventually. And as soon as it does, all your claims about how it "will not affect the experience of the players one bit" go right out the window. When the illusion is broken, the joy goes with it.

The ogre showing up anyway feels a lot different to me than fudging die rolls or having the princess die anyway or always having the right choice be last.

Do the players not expect to have encounters? Why would the irl equivalent of a subterfuge roll be needed to hide from them that you were putting an ogre on either one instead of an ogre on the left or troll on the right - that seems really hard to suss out?

 

[Steampunkette]

I do think it’s a bad thing, hence trying to understand why people do it / defend it.

HARD Disagree.

People have told you why their lines on railroading are where they are. People have tried to express why it's not 100% all the time WrongBadFun.

Your response is, invariably "No. You're wrong. This is why you're wrong. Railroading is X and RP is Y and therefore Railroading cannot and never shall be good or right."

This doesn't show any attempt at understanding. It shows only an interest in reading with the intent to respond. Your mind? It was made up at least 12 pages ago. Probably much sooner.

 

[overgeeked]

Character improvement certainly is not required for it to be a roleplaying game.

I think it is. It doesn't have to be mechanical improvement. It can be circumstantial to the game world.

Your decision space is always limited in some way, in fact without limits it is not an RPG either, it is just making up a story.

I disagree. Story space is limited, too. In RPGs we just do most of that limiting beforehand. We want to play an RPG (as opposed to any other form of game or entertainment). We want to play X genre. We want to play Y specific RPG that conforms to that genre. We want to play Z Edition of that RPG. We want to play A-style characters. We want to play in B setting. On and on.

I've been in lots of one shots over the years for a variety of things marketed as RPGs. Do (4) and (5) only apply to continuing games?

I would say no, they don't only apply to continuing games. Persistent world meaning it's internally consistent from one moment to the next, not continually played in.

What does "improve" mean - accomplishing goals the character might have, or improving stats? It feels like a game could easily not need the later (at least after some point).

Sure. That could easily be changed to something like "characters changing based on the decisions you made". It doesn't need to be improvement and it doesn't need to be mechanical.

And, for (1) it sure feels like some decisions are required, and that the number of decisions we make IRL is impossible... and that there is a lot of territory in between that folks here would call role-playing.

Sure. Zero decisions precludes it from being an RPG while infinite decisions is utterly impractical.

For me, it's about having decisions that are relevant. Meaningful, consequential decisions. I don't want a DM to pretend I have a choice when I don't. If I don't have a meaningful, consequential choice, don't present me with a choice. Tell me what happens. If that means the game is a long series of the DM narrating to the players what happens and the only choices we really get are at character creation, then it's quite clearly not an RPG. Likewise, it's not really an RPG if the only time the DM stops narrating at the players is when they get to combat. It becomes a miniatures skirmish game, not an RPG.

And none of that is onetruewayism or badwrongfun, it's pointing out that there are categories of games. Games are fun. Yay games. But chess isn't an RPG. Warhammer Fantasy Battles isn't an RPG, but Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play is. Jenga isn't an RPG in and of itself...but it can be the random mechanic for Dread (or some other game that uses the tower for the random element). Certain elements must be present for it to be an RPG, take away enough of them and it's no longer an RPG.

If you point to a car and say truck, you've made a category error. They're both vehicles, granted. But a car isn't a truck, nor is a truck a car...unless you're talking about that abomination the El Camino. The mullet of vehicles.

 

[Stalker0]

Objective judgement? It’s not about preference, it’s about what’s railroading and what isn’t.

In the interest of debate, I will agree with your definition.

therefore, the quantum ogre is a form of railroading.

Let us also define TABLE ENJOYMENT, which is the summation of “fun” from all players at the table + DM. I will make the bold statement that this is the metric by wish the success of a game is measured

We will then define DM EFFICIENCY, which is Table Enjoyment / DM prep time.

if we assume a DM has limited time in their day for prep time, then activities that increase DM efficiency will allow more overall Table Enjoyment.

so to your op, the reason i defend the Quantum Ogre is because it is a tool to increase DM efficiency (guaranteed encounters ensures less prep time required), and if done correctly has no negative impact to the players Table Enjoyment, ergo increasing our Table Enjoyment metric…thereby resulting in a better game

 

[overgeeked]

People have told you why their lines on railroading are where they are. People have tried to express why it's not 100% all the time WrongBadFun.

Yes, they have. And the responses have mostly been "I like it therefore it's good" the second best is "it's easier therefore it's good" and "how dare you not like the thing I like".

Your response is, invariably "No. You're wrong. This is why you're wrong. Railroading is X and RP is Y and therefore Railroading cannot and never shall be good or right."

That's what happens when you disagree with someone on a discussion forum. You tell them that you disagree and why.

This doesn't show any attempt at understanding. It shows only an interest in reading with the intent to respond.

Automatically agreeing with whatever you're told isn't understanding either.

Your mind? It was made up at least 12 pages ago. Probably much sooner.

It'll be no surprise when I inform you you're not telepathic. I didn't even start the thread with a working definition of railroading. I got that about 8-10 pages into the thread.

 

[Malmuria]

The ogre showing up anyway feels a lot different to me than fudging die rolls or having the princess die anyway or always having the right choice be last.

Do the players not expect to have encounters? Why would the irl equivalent of a subterfuge roll be needed to hide from them that you were putting an ogre on either one instead of an ogre on the left or troll on the right - that seems really hard to suss out?

The quantum ogre is just an abstract situation of illusion of player choice. If it was a literal random ogre encounter in the woods then maybe it's not a big deal (unless the players knew there was an ogre lurking and chose the path based on avoiding the ogre). But illusionism comes up in a lot of other ways, and imo requires a suspension of disbelief from the players, who might be happy to do that.

For example, do you dial down the difficulty of a combat mid way through? Some players want dms to do this, because they like the game aspects of combat but don't actually want to "lose." For others (me included), if there's nothing at stake then why roll dice at all?

I would agree that when you create something isn't a big deal, i.e. whether you have the tavern prepared or just make it up on the spot. I don't think it has to be the case that a non-linear adventure requires enormous prep. But I don't see the point in making something up on the spot and then pretending it was all part of your extensive world building.

 

[Campbell]

From my perspective the quantum ogre is only a problem in the case where a choice is offered and the GM is deciding ahead of time no matter which choice is made they will encounter the ogre. Basically it's not that they are creating content in real time. It's that choice is being proffered with no real intent to honor that choice. It's about the process rather than the time of creation.

 

[Stalker0]

From my perspective the quantum ogre is only a problem in the case where a choice is offered and the GM is deciding ahead of time no matter which choice is made they will encounter the ogre. Basically it's not that they are creating content in real time. It's that choice is being proffered with no real intent to honor that choice. It's about the process rather than the time of creation.

Something we also must consider is how many consequences must a choice have to be defined as “meaningful”.

going back to my earlier example. Let’s say tunnel 1 has the McMuffin and tunnel 2 has a magic pool. Water from the pool will aid in releasing the mcguffin from its guardian, so the “optimal path” is going there first before engaging the guardian.

now by using a quantum ogre I am removing one choice from the players (when they encounter said ogre) but I’m still offering impact on their choice.

i would offer jn that example, though I engaged in railroading, the player still received a meaningful choice

 

[overgeeked]

Let us also define TABLE ENJOYMENT, which is the summation of “fun” from all players at the table + DM. I will make the bold statement that this is the metric by wish the success of a game is measured.

Sure.

We will then define DM EFFICIENCY, which is Table Enjoyment / DM prep time.

If that's the definition you want then the DM should only ever run a purely improv game and as long an there's any fun at all they end up with near- or infinite DM efficiency.

if we assume a DM has limited time in their day for prep time, then activities that increase DM efficiency will allow more overall Table Enjoyment.

One doesn't follow from the other.

so to your op, the reason i defend the Quantum Ogre is because it is a tool to increase DM efficiency (guaranteed encounters ensures less prep time required)

Yes.

and if done correctly has no negative impact to the players Table Enjoyment, ergo increasing our Table Enjoyment metric…thereby resulting in a better game

No. Because if done at all railroading zeros out table enjoyment.