D&D General Why defend railroading?

[Asisreo]

This only matters if you go through with the idea that, on the face of it, your actions will directly impact your advancement (outside the gear-acquisition component in genres and settings where that's relevant). Frankly, a lot of players don't really give a crap about that, or original RQ style advancement would be more popular than it is.

I think they do care, just a little.

Have you ever had those scenarios where you have a fairly high-level adventure set up. The DM had a cool sequence for traveling. It isn't about draining resources, but its about exploring the world and enjoying the immersive worldbuilding. Stuff like climbing Mt. Doom or walking through the Valley of the Damned.

You ask the players if they're ready to set off and the wizard says "Can I just teleport there?" No matter what, its kinda a dissapointing feeling, right? Even if you say "No, magic is preventing your from teleporting," it shows they didn't really prioritize the journey. Why? Most likely because they've never been given incentive to explore the world like that before. Exploration had been nothing but meaningless worldbuilding that's irrelevant to their current quest.

XP can be a way for them to engage in the world. Trekking through a dangerous land can now be seen as beneficial, almost like training to before finally getting to the boss. They may even catch a level or two on the way, which is incentive.

I'm not saying XP is the cure-all for disengagement, but its at least a factor that could prove useful for a DM to incentivize immersive gameplay without railroading them down the specific path.

 

[Umbran]

Sure, but it's still not a railroad. Not all choices that aren't railroads will be meaningful.

So, here's where we hit what looks like an arbitrary distinction:
Whichever road you go down, you roll on the same chart.
We didn't say how many items are on the chart. It if has two items, it is okay, if it has one, it is railroading?
What if the GM pre-rolls on the chart, and they come up when they come up?
Is, "has determined order by random roll" different from "determined order by choice"? If so, why does the difference matter?

The weird edge-questions are an indication that this is following a dogma, and not a principle. And I am not sure "meaningful choice" or "agency" are the actual dogmas in play here.

Which is why I brought up agency. What does agency really mean? Is a character supposed to have complete agency, at all times? That seems implausible, both in terms of practicality, and in terms of "that's not how people's lives work".

 

[Charlaquin]

In order for the players' choice of path to take to be invalidated by the Schrödinger's Ogre, the potential presence or absence of the ogre actually has to materially affect the meaningfulness and/or consequentiality of the players' decisions.

If the players' decision is based on factors that are orthogonal to the possible presence or absence of Schrödinger's Ogre, the ogre turning up does not materially affect the meaningfulness of that decision. As such, no invalidation (and hence no railroading) is happening.

If on the other hand the players are making decisions based on avoiding encounters generally or avoiding possible encounters with ogres specifically, and then you as DM willfully decide they are specifically going to have an encounter with an ogre anyway, that is invalidation and hence railroading (at least IMO). [*]

---

[*] Exceptions made for the vagaries of the dice. For instance, if the players want to avoid random encounters generally and roll badly on the checks needed to accomplish that, and you roll up a random encounter that happens to be an ogre, or if they take a path that has a non-zero chance of an encounter with an ogre in order to avoid paths with a certainty of ogre encounters or a higher likelihood of same, and you roll up a random encounter that happens to be an ogre... then they encounter an ogre despite their best efforts. But at least you did not willfully and specifically decide for that encounter to happen.

I agree with you, but I think this is ultimately a consequentialist argument - you and I are both assessing whether or not Schrödinger's Ogre is railroading based on the material consequences it has on the players. But I think others are coming at the question from a deontological perspective - this position holds that using Schrödinger's Ogre is railroading in principle, whether it materially affects the players’ experience of the game or not.

 

[TheSword]

I think they do care, just a little.

Have you ever had those scenarios where you have a fairly high-level adventure set up. The DM had a cool sequence for traveling. It isn't about draining resources, but its about exploring the world and enjoying the immersive worldbuilding. Stuff like climbing Mt. Doom or walking through the Valley of the Damned.

You ask the players if they're ready to set off and the wizard says "Can I just teleport there?" No matter what, its kinda a dissapointing feeling, right? Even if you say "No, magic is preventing your from teleporting," it shows they didn't really prioritize the journey. Why? Most likely because they've never been given incentive to explore the world like that before. Exploration had been nothing but meaningless worldbuilding that's irrelevant to their current quest.

XP can be a way for them to engage in the world. Trekking through a dangerous land can now be seen as beneficial, almost like training to before finally getting to the boss. They may even catch a level or two on the way, which is incentive.

I'm not saying XP is the cure-all for disengagement, but its at least a factor that could prove useful for a DM to incentivize immersive gameplay without railroading them down the specific path.

This is probably a case of knowing your players capabilities and making sure you are investing time doing the things that are appropriate for their abilities.

If the PCs can teleport, then you need to set them other challenges other than getting from A to B.

I have no problem though, taking that group of dragon riding cultists that were ravaging a town on route, and repurposing them to be attacking the city the characters are teleporting too. Or moving that mystery that was going to be in the first tavern they stayed in to the tavern they choose in the city.

When and where the PCs encounter the challenge is inconsequential compared to the choices they are allowed to make when they do meet them.

My gut feeling is that people don’t care about the where and when (if they even ever knew). They do care about whether or not they are allowed to try and stop the Dragon cultists destroying the city and if their actions have any meaning at that point.

 

[Cadence]

It would work with one. It's not the number. It's whether it's avoidable through player choice. With only one encounter placed down one of the forks, it's still an avoidable situation and I haven't removed the players' agency by forcing it on them no matter what they do.

Do you also use encounters as needed for places you didn't pre-plan one? (I assume by your previous statements that all encounters of every type aren't avoided simply by guessing spots you didn't pre-plan). So I could use one of the unused five or six encounter cards for the woods if it made sense?

 

[Asisreo]

If the PCs can teleport, then you need to set them other challenges other than getting from A to B.

It isn't about the challenge, its about the world and the immersion. If they stumble upon a village being raided, it could have been bandits that level 1 characters could have easily handled but its important because now that village is indebted to them and if they ever return, they have good relations with that village.

But if players have no reason to even travel in that direction, they never would have engaged. Same thing for stuff like CR 5 young dragon versus your level 15 party. They can decide to kill it, but that creates a power vaccuum and now the kobold tribes and the kua-toa tribes engage in a war that starts to bleed into their homebase. But since they skipped it, nothing develops.

And sure, you could move stuff around sometimes but constantly shuffling things also betrays the agency of the players. If teleporting never really mattered and all conflict magically teleports with them, why take the spell?

Sure, the illusion and what-not but its still just railroading but with curtains over the windows.

 

[robus]

I had no idea I would be meeting Janet Jackson that day. That was my fault for writing unclearly. I probably should have put a comma before the "and." Sorry about that.

Ok, but then I really don’t understand how as a player that you’d be unhappy that something you didn’t know would happen, happened?

 

[Maxperson]

So, here's where we hit what looks like an arbitrary distinction:
Whichever road you go down, you roll on the same chart.
We didn't say how many items are on the chart. It if has two items, it is okay, if it has one, it is railroading?
What if the GM pre-rolls on the chart, and they come up when they come up?
Is, "has determined order by random roll" different from "determined order by choice"? If so, why does the difference matter?

I'm not talking about there being an encounter down both roads that is determined randomly, though. I'm talking about whether or not there is even an encounter being determined randomly. THEN rolling on some chart. If there might or might not be an encounter down either path, it's not the similar to there always being an ogre down both paths.

Which is why I brought up agency. What does agency really mean? Is a character supposed to have complete agency, at all times? That seems implausible, both in terms of practicality, and in terms of "that's not how people's lives work".

For me, if the DM is taking away player choice from mattering, even if only in the short term(encounter vs. all the other stuff down the path), then that's wrong unless the player has agreed to it. If it's game rules taking away player choice, such as a 1st level human not being able to just jump up and fly away, even if the player wants to do it, then that is not wrong.

It's also fine for in fiction situations to remove player options or choice. If the PCs anger a local lord and he puts them in jail, then that's fine. However, if the DM has set it up before they even get to town that the PCs will be jailed no matter what they do, then that's not fine. That's not the fiction. That's the DM.

Railroading in my opinion is wrong if the DM hasn't gotten the players' okay to engage in it.

 

[Maxperson]

Ok, but then I really don’t understand how as a player that you’d be unhappy that something you didn’t know would happen, happened?

What the players know isn't the point. Most of the time they won't know. That doesn't make it okay to deceive them. It's like the example I gave upthread about a few friends of mine that are very sloppy with money, leaving bills all over their houses. It would be very easy to take one without them ever knowing. Theft is not right, even if he never found out.

I've also seen a few instances where this sort of railroading was discovered. It isn't easy and it doesn't happen often, but I've never seen the players happy about it. Players in my experience generally want their choices to matter, even if those choices are as minor as which path to go down. If I were ever in a game where I discovered that the DM was deceiving me and railroading my PC, that would be the last game I played with that DM.

 

[TheSword]

It isn't about the challenge, its about the world and the immersion. If they stumble upon a village being raided, it could have been bandits that level 1 characters could have easily handled but its important because now that village is indebted to them and if they ever return, they have good relations with that village.

But if players have no reason to even travel in that direction, they never would have engaged. Same thing for stuff like CR 5 young dragon versus your level 15 party. They can decide to kill it, but that creates a power vaccuum and now the kobold tribes and the kua-toa tribes engage in a war that starts to bleed into their homebase. But since they skipped it, nothing develops.

And sure, you could move stuff around sometimes but constantly shuffling things also betrays the agency of the players. If teleporting never really mattered and all conflict magically teleports with them, why take the spell?

Sure, the illusion and what-not but its still just railroading but with curtains over the windows.

Sure, not every encounter needs to be a combat encounter. There is also mileage in PCs feeling boss by using overwhelming force on some bandits they could defeat easily. This would wear very thin for me after it happened once or twice though.

I want to be heroic, not spend my time doing the rpg equivalent taking the bins out.

Sure you can run a level 15 party through the Sunken Citadel but I think you’d get the same odd looks as if you tried to put a 2nd level party through the Tomb of Horrors.

The players having fun, is more important to me than whether the dragon cultists were encountered in Red Larch as I originally intended or Waterdeep.

Teleport is a time saving, utility spell. I wouldn’t give any party advantages by taking the teleport spell, other than a solid means of escape. I wouldn’t stop them using it with arbitrary restrictions. However I would know they had it in advance of the session and the session wouldn’t then assume they would take a long circuitous route to reach Waterdeep that the Dragon Cultists are now attacking.