D&D General Why defend railroading?

[ECMO3]

Perfect--I would say to the players: You try to set up a business trading in a nearby town, but it's going to be difficult because you don't have any money and there are already established guilds. Guild A says they will help you get started if you help them deal with some giant wolf spiders in their warehouse. Guild B will help you if you sabotage Guild A. Guild C is secretly a cult. Meanwhile, the bandits have absconded with the princess in a hurry, leaving valuables in their hideout, but locals say they've seen weird monsters around there. The king/noble is sort of mad at you for not helping him, and that might come back around some day. Also whatever world-destroying plot that's happening in the background moves a little bit closer to completion, and this manifests itself in the world in some way.

What do you do?

So basically you force them back on the railroad!

 

[Cadence]

Look. Here's the quantom ogre rephrased in slightly different terms.

At the end of a last corridor in the dungeon there are three doors. Behind one of the doors in the macguffin. The players don't know which door and all the doors are identical so there is no way to know. If they find the macguffin it's likely they won't need to open any remaining doors.

The DM has prepared an encounter behind each door. The players know that the macguffin is behind one of them and they have been led to believe there is a chance that they could open the right door on their first attempt.

However, whether because the DM doesn't want to waste prep or because he believes it will heighten the drama, the DM has determined that the door with the Macguffin will be the last one the PCs open no matter which door they choose. They are always going to have to go through all the encounters.

This is the illusionism! I leave it to the reader to decide if this is a railroad.

This feels like something I wouldn't do because the players were promised a choice about something in particular (even if it was essentially random) and it didn't happen. If they didn't suspect the McGuffin was behind one of them, then at first it doesn't seem bad to me to make it the last .. but then later when the emergent story includes how unlucky they were picking the other two doors when they could have ended it does feel bad to me. (On the other hand, in terms of quantum Ogre, I don't picture anyone making being unlucky about finding an ogre in a place they might very well have found an ogre, a big part of the story later. Maybe something worse would have been down the other path, for example).

I think if the DM had put the promised McGuffin behind door A and left it, that putting an ogre behind whichever they pick first (including A) feels bad to to me compared to either putting the ogre behind whichever wrong door they picked first or having or having predecided the ogre was in the McGuffon room. I'm not sure that's rational, but there it is.

All the bad feeling goes away for me if it's a magic dungeon (like in one of Cook's 'Dread Empire' prequels) that clearly has been messing with the players ('you move toward door A and hear a rumbling of giant machines' or 'there's a mist at the door and you feel your stomach lurch as you walk through [teleporting]'). Then the story afterwards isn't them being unlucky, it's the sentient dungeon being an expletive.

 

[Asisreo]

One of the biggest conductors for a railroaded campaign is not giving freeform exp. It isn't always railroading, but its almost always railroading.

Why? Because milestone exp removes player agency about how they become stronger. Completely removing exp means a player could go through an entire gladiator's Coliseum and never get better at combat nor stronger.

And the issue with that is that it discourages the players from interacting with your world outside of the main-story plot. "Why should I go into that mysterious cave, when our objective is a chapel?" Now, they feel like they have a choice between risking their lives for nothing or moving on, which is a non-choice.

Many DMs say they're concerned with the narrative pacing, but I have never seen the narrative pacing ever get wonky in my campaign because my adventures always assume you're at least still within a ballpark estimate of your expected level. If I write the end encounter as a hard encounter for level 5 players, it will be deadly for levels 3-4 players and medium for level 6 players, but that's fine. Their choices influenced the difficulty, that's agency.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

One of the biggest conductors for a railroaded campaign is not giving freeform exp. It isn't always railroading, but its almost always railroading.

Why? Because milestone exp removes player agency about how they become stronger. Completely removing exp means a player could go through an entire gladiator's Coliseum and never get better at combat nor stronger.

And the issue with that is that it discourages the players from interacting with your world outside of the main-story plot. "Why should I go into that mysterious cave, when our objective is a chapel?" Now, they feel like they have a choice between risking their lives for nothing or moving on, which is a non-choice.

Many DMs say they're concerned with the narrative pacing, but I have never seen the narrative pacing ever get wonky in my campaign because my adventures always assume you're at least still within a ballpark estimate of your expected level. If I write the end encounter as a hard encounter for level 5 players, it will be deadly for levels 3-4 players and medium for level 6 players, but that's fine. Their choices influenced the difficulty, that's agency.

I mean you can just define milestones to be 'did something pretty challenging for couple of sessions' or something like that. Fighting in coliseum sounds challenging to me, regardless of whether I as GM had expected it to happen or not.

 

[ReshiIRE]

Also, EXP does not need to be a reward or a primary reward. There doesn't even need to be a reward besides roleplay and less tangable rewards besides items or EXP. I can see what you're maybe getting at, but milestone XP doesn't need to be so restrictive and a railroad conductor.

 

[Asisreo]

I mean you can just define milestones to be 'did something pretty challenging for couple of sessions' or something like that. Fighting in coliseum sounds challenging to me, regardless of whether I as Gm had expected it to happen or not.

The point is that, unless you were to say before the session/adventure that you can gain exp through the coliseum, the player didn't think of it to get stronger. Not to mention, if there actually is a chance of them dying, there's not much incentive to do it in the first place. Exp leveling implies that any fighting, so long as its significantly challenging, can give worthwhile exp.

Also, EXP does not need to be a reward or a primary reward. There doesn't even need to be a reward besides roleplay and less tangable rewards besides items or EXP. I can see what you're maybe getting at, but milestone XP doesn't need to be so restrictive and a railroad conductor.

Some players think different. Roleplay isn't a reward, nor the satisfaction of a good ending. Its the fun of being alongside the character you created on their journey going from a simple guard to the mercenary king of the material plane. But they want at least some agency in that buildup and not that the DM decided they were finally okay letting it happen.

Or its the fun of just fighting new, unique creatures. But if it risks their character's lives, they'll feel deflated from wanting to fight it unless it actually increases their likelihood of completing their main objective.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

It doesn't have to be ogre related. In the original situation the GM gave the players a choice - but that choice was meaningless.

Yes. So what? Characters make all sort of choices all the time not all of them need to be meaningful. If I ask the player what colour cloak their character wants to buy but it really doesn't matter, is this a problem? That some choices don't matter doesn't mean that any choices don't matter. Some things are just for flavour and verisimilitude.

That's the loss of agency. The GM could have just skipped asking the party where they wanted to go first and aggressively framed the scene.

"Ok so you choose one of the three woods at random and arrive. You encounter an ogre".

Now if it seems likely the players would balk at that then the problem should be clear.

I mean it would make the game world feel artificial and break the player's suspension of disbelief. So that's why it better to use the quantum forest.

What other option is there? Prep for every possible square mile the character's could decide to wander into? Somehow artificially limit the choices they can make, have bizarrely small world or just let them aimlessly wander around until they happen to finally click the right thing so that something interesting happens? (I hate that last thing so much. I take rails over that any day.)

 

[jasper]

I’d really like to know. I keep seeing arguments about player choice and agency and railroading. And for the life of me I cannot understand why anyone would defend railroading. Any advocates of railroading willing to explain why it’s good to do?

Hey I am new DM. I still trying to figure out what the d12 does.
Hey I am DM, these goobers ignore my plot hooks after they accepted my plot hooks.
Hey I try to tell a story.
Hey it not railroading if I play limits on things.
Hey Bob is always trying to tear campaigns apart but no one will kick Bob out.
Hey it is not railroading when I do it.
Hey GOOBER, we can play the game I have set up, or play Uno! You have those choices.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

The point is that, unless you were to say before the session/adventure that you can gain exp through the coliseum, the player didn't think of it to get stronger. Not to mention, if there actually is a chance of them dying, there's not much incentive to do it in the first place. Exp leveling implies that any fighting, so long as its significantly challenging, can give worthwhile exp.

Eh. Levelling is part of the game, you don't need to tediously count some meaningless points for it to happen. Of course doing seriously dangerous things should count towards milestones.

 

[TheSword]

So? Go back to 2011 and take it up with them then.

I don’t need to. I made my feeling on the matter clear on it here.

Ok think about it this way. My character has 1hp and this is an old school game where 0hp is death. I know that if I have to fight a monster my character will probably die. However, we are this close to finishing the adventure. I decide that even if the chance of finding the macguffin is only 1/3 I'll take the risk.

But I don't have 1/3 chance of find the macguffin. I have 0 because I am deceived.

If I enter the deadly forest of Yoth and the DM rolls on the encounter table and a beholder attacks me, I may figure, well them's the breaks. I knew the forest was dangerous and we just lucked out. If instead the GM just pretended to roll on the table and made the decision to just have a beholder attack then again I am deceived. If the GM openly decides to have a beholder attack, then I may curse myself for not taking the rumours seriously enough but at least I am not deceived - I'm not under the impression that there was a possiblity that I could not encounter a beholder.

The difference here is whether I know the DM is making the decisions about what to encounter or not. Even if as the player I am not making the decisions I am still being deceived if the DM is pretending things are happening due to random chance when in fact they are not.

The issue here is that your DM is decisions that rely on player abilities to work, independent of knowledge of the players abilities… and not providing you information to inform your choices.

A DM who keeps throwing optional encounters at PCs to create a fun session even after they drop to 1hp and have no healing is being a douche. They are actively using their fiat to kill/incapacitate players. That’s a DM issue, not a game structure issue.

If the DM wants the cloakwood to be a really tough place, they need to warn you about that in advance. Then you won’t go in with 1hp.

The articles about the quantum ogre make it clear that the solution is to provide information or to encourage PCs to interrogate the game world to get information.