D&D General Why defend railroading?

[Ovinomancer]

I have to admit, I don't agree with the second part about railroading being degenerate linear play. One can railroad just as easily in a sandbox or open world scenario. "I do this - fail, I do that - fail, I do the other thing - fail, I do the thing that the DM has determined is the only possible way forward - success" is just as much of a railroad no matter what the type of scenario.

I think there is a danger here of fetishizing open world or sandbox play as somehow superior. "Oh, I play a sandbox so it's impossible for me to railroad" is an argument I've seen put forward many, many times. And it's not true. All I have to do is deny any plausible option until the right one is chosen and I've railroaded.

Again, it's all about plausible choices. A travel scenario from A to B is obviously linear. But, it's not any more or less likely to be a railroad than an open world scenario.

I certainly won't be the one fetishizing sandbox play. I see where you're coming from, but I think that if we're in a persistent case of use of GM Force, that the structure doesn't really look like a sandbox anymore, it starts to look linear. Your example certainly looks like a linear path hidden in a sandbox.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Railroading is only an issue if the players SEE the rails and try to jump off the speeding train.

Or, frankly, care. I've had at least one campaign (Scion 1e) which was absolutely fairly railroady (not all the way, but still plenty), because the necessary prep and thought for it was simply not going to permit too much free roaming; there'd either be nothing to do, or it'd be too easy to run into problems that were literally impossibly difficult.

I commented on this at the end of the campaign and one player's response was "Yeah, it was kind of a railroad, but we enjoyed the trip."

The assumption that this is impossible (or its not an RPG when it happens) is something I think the OP is having trouble engaging with.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Ya know I do not think I have ever used Quantum Ogres but I have used Quantum villages and side adventures, for when the party heads off in to Terra Incognita.

 

[Thomas Shey]

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.

The question is, does it matter if the presence of the ogre is not the relevant part of the choice? I believe one example used earlier was the destination you'd end up on--but you'd run into an ogre either way.

Its really hard for me to see that's meaningfully different than "there's an ogre along each path".

 

[Mallus]

In the example proposed, tunnel A will always have the mcguffin, but the ogre will be in whatever tunnel is chosen first

This raises another question: are random encounters railroading? Let’s say the ogre appears because of a roll on a random encounter chart (that the DM chose to roll). Players don’t get a choice in this case, either.

 

[Krachek]

I wonder if part of the problem is that you're arbitrarily defining it as a "collaborative storytelling game" when in fact the only universally-accepted word in there is "game".

Calling it a storytelling game implies someone's telling a story, which by extension means everyone else is consuming said story. Probably not what you meant, hm? Call it a "story creation game" and maybe you're on sounder footing...and maybe not.

As for collaborative, that's also not universal by any means; particularly in old-school circles where the DM really is out to (fairly and neutrally) kill the PCs and the players are out to make sure their PCs survive her best attempts. (side note: IMO the game by far works best when played this way)

Depends. If the player is saying no to the hooks without proactively suggesting or doing something else, there's a problem. But if the player's saying no to doing this because the PC would rather be doing that, then IMO it's on the DM to react and be ready to run something other than what she might first have had in mind.

In the preface of the phb Mearls use “playing DnD is an exercice in collaborative creation”.
But he can be wrong.

 

[iserith]

This raises another question: are random encounters railroading? Let’s say the ogre appears because of a roll on a random encounter chart (that the DM chose to roll). Players don’t get a choice in this case, either.

No, random encounters are not railroading in and of themselves. Only a DM can railroad, when he or she forces the players along a certain path despite the players' expectation that they have a meaningful choice otherwise.

 

[Thomas Shey]

No, random encounters are not railroading in and of themselves. Only a DM can railroad, when he or she forces the players along a certain path despite the players' expectation that they have a meaningful choice otherwise.

Which, of course, depends on what constitutes a "path". That's the problem with this discussion; if I'm reading the OP right, if you make any elements carry over--at all--its a railroad.

Which seems utterly ludicrous to me, but in regard to his position, not my circus, not my monkeys.

 

[iserith]

Which, of course, depends on what constitutes a "path". That's the problem with this discussion; if I'm reading the OP right, if you make any elements carry over--at all--its a railroad.

Which seems utterly ludicrous to me, but in regard to his position, not my circus, not my monkeys.

People are free to be wrong.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

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.

1) If no one is being fooled, how can you call it an illusion then?
2) Being "made up by the GM" is absolutely not the same as "constantly and secretly changing whenever the DM feels like it." With illusionism, you must be committed to denying the players the chance to see that the world is being made up on the spot. If you're open about that (which I am, in the exceedingly rare cases where "re-frame things to be where they need to be" is absolutely necessary), then it's not illusionism, because you're actually informing the players about what's going on.

I mean, come on man. You know that arbitrary ad-hoc modification of a world is not absolutely identical in all ways to ANY form of inventing an imaginary thing. You're a smart and well-read person, from what I can tell; you've interacted with media enough to be familiar with things like "canon" and the like, which explicitly fork apart arbitrary change to the world from well-grounded change to it. One of these things is okay. The other is not. Don't pretend that illusionism is precisely the same as invention. The former is explicitly, specifically, intentionally hidden from discovery. The latter, in general, is very much intended to be discovered.

Now, if what you really mean is stuff like "glossing over the 17 branches off the road they could have taken, because they're heading for the Fire Swamp and thus don't really care that they could potentially go elsewhere," okay, that's fair. I just...wouldn't call that "illusionism" anymore, you're just glossing over unimportant details and false starts so that the party can focus on the things they've already chosen to do. As far as I'm concerned, you're defending people presenting each and every one of those 17 branch points as an Actual Serious Choice that the party must think about....only for literally none of them to matter one bit, despite spending table time on making them.

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.

Alright. Why is it different? I have my reasons for seeing it as equivalent to fudging die rolls, but even setting those aside, I don't see how that isn't the same as the princess dying anyway or always having the right choice be the last choice, particularly the latter, since that's about player choices specifically. If the ogre shows up literally no matter what you do, literally no matter where you go, literally regardless of choices or circumstances, isn't that the same as having "the way forward" (the right choice) definitely never happen on the first two tries? Because both of those things are "event X happens, literally no matter how you choose to behave," just "event X" is "you fail twice and then succeed" vs. "an ogre appears."

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?

I'm sure players do. But choices, even small choices, should in general have merit. Now, maybe you have a reasonably well-established reason why SOME ogre will show up whichever path the players take, because this is ogre country. In that case, it's not that the players' choices don't matter, it's that some previous choice(s)* mattered for determining whether they might encounter ogres, e.g. "we decided to adventure in the Wood of the Western Wyld instead of the Southern Sirensong Sea." Or maybe it really is the same singular ogre, but the choice the players make affects when or how they encounter this ogre--because he's tailing them (again, presumptively due to past choices*), or both the left and right routes go through places "in his territory," but he starts on one side before going to the other, meaning the choice might mean starting off on more positive footing (meeting him outside one of "his places") vs more negative footing (running into him AFTER looting one of "his places.")

So...yeah. I'm sure players expect encounters. But unless there's a good reason for ogres to be generically about (an easy thing to establish, mind!), or some other difference occurs as a result of the players choosing path A over path B, I do think it's in the same wheelhouse as the non-fudging examples you described. Same as changing midway through a murder mystery who the real murderer was, or deciding that the party would definitely encounter the Countess ten minutes after starting down either the left or right path. If the choice isn't really a choice, just gloss over it; don't create fictitious choices that appear to have value but are literally irrelevant.

*It's worth noting here, there does need to be a LITTLE bit of pseudo-non-choice, in that even for a hardcore no-prep DM, worldbuilding and a campaign premise had to happen to some extent. This implies a TON of invisible pre-game choices made by a given character, but the players are still presumptively choosing to go with this by agreeing to participate in the game. Thus, as noted, I consider this following from player choices, though the DM bears a significant burden to make that campaign premise exceptionally clear well in advance.