D&D General Why defend railroading?

[Maxperson]

Here's a what-if for you: what if the pre-written module says there in fact is an ogre down each path? That is to say, if the party go down one path and then the other they will meet two ogres, one at a time.

Is the choice of path thus invalidated? Is it invaliated if local rumours tell of an ogre down the south path but the locals don't (yet) know about the one on the north path, and the party use those rumours to inform their choice of path?

I've already answered about pre-planning. Pre-planning is different. It's not the DM just sticking an ogre on the players no matter what. Because they can leave both paths and just strike off into the forest and avoid both ogres, so they have choice that isn't present with the railroad.

 

[Lanefan]

Not realtime in the sense I'm talking about it; I'm talking about where you can see yourself level from accumulated experience in one sitting.

If you're gaining an entire level in one session you're not playing the game I play.

Not even close.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Out of how many choices? Let’s assume a campaign taking place over 6 months real time. Let’s also assume your example, a pretty clear-cut case of removing agency from players.

If the example occurs once during the 6-month campaign, was the campaign a railroad?

Just once in six months, and otherwise never, not even a little? Nah. I would call it moment of real weakness, though. Something to regret and learn from. My players have explicitly said they value that I prioritize their agency, that I take pains to accommodate their choices, and that if they make a decision, it has real consequences that may extend far beyond that single moment.

But what if we turn this around? What happens if a campaign is built out of this sort of thing? E.g., a session without such is rare. Isn't that what an illusionism-based game is? One where a sizable plurality, if not a strong majority, of the choices are illusory in this way. Is that a railroad? Is it good? Would DMs try to hide it? Would players be upset if they found out?

For me, it's just pointless. If the dm knows something is going to happen, spending time creating the illusion of a choice is uninteresting. As a dm, I'd rather play the game than perform these kind of uninteresting magic tricks to create the illusion of depth.
The Stygian Library showed me what fun it can be as a dm when you don't totally know what's going to happen next and you let the dice decide. And the library does change depending on how the PCs interact with the librarians. Without much work, you can start to create an emergent situation, where the character the PCs meet at level 8 knows the character that's back at level 5, and so forth.

Agreed on the pointlessness. I haven't heard of the Stygian Library. My experience was with content (that I extended) that you randomly rolled each room before entering. Does the Library work the same way? It would have similar issues if it did. The main criticism was that the rooms genuinely didn't exist until they were rolled, so we weren't so much "exploring" as producing the world, whereas (even if it's still random-gen), "pre-rolling" the map would have meant there WAS a map to be explored.

I don't have a problem with this, as long as the DM does not, in any way, reveal that's what they're doing. It is neither good nor bad on its own. If the DM is doing such a thing to provoke more fun, then why not? It is only a problem if the players know they had no choice.

Then my key argument is, no DM can guarantee their players never figure this out forever. They'll catch on eventually. I'm not a dumb guy by any means, but my players regularly make me sweat that I've made too simple a story, too obvious a result. They'd eventually know what was up, even if I weren't bad at keeping secrets.

A relatively benign example would be discovering a special magic item. Maybe the DM is using a dungeon in which the magic item -- which, say, is either really cool or is significant for player's character background/arc -- is in a very specific place. Let's say the players don't discover it. I see nothing wrong with the DM placing it somewhere else.

I tie all of my magic items (even the very first ones discovered by the party) into very specific narrative and world-built things. With very few exceptions, you basically couldn't find them elsewhere, because...that wouldn't make any narrative sense. If there's something important enough that I don't want the players to miss it, I have PLENTY of tools to make sure they don't. As an example, recently the party had searched through a tower left behind by the ancient pre-elf civilization, and failed to search the bottom floor (probably because they'd entered it at the end of the previous session and just forgot). As they were leaving, I told the half-elf in the party that he could feel that there was something he was missing, the barest inkling of his magical senses (because, being the only "mundane" party member, he hasn't developed his magical senses normally--but this is something very specific to his lineage and story).

There's no need to make quantum treasure. Just...make the hidden stuff they're supposed to find really easy to find. Make it want to be found. Problem solved, no choices invalidated. Had the player wished to, he could have ignored the feeling and the party could just leave. They aren't required to take a hook if they don't want to. I'd be a bit sad, but I'd roll with it.

To put it another way, what goes on behind the screen doesn't exist until it occurs in front of the screen. A skilled DM knows how to utilize this in a way that serves the campaign as a whole.

And what of the idea that no DM is sufficiently skilled to keep this song and dance up, perfectly, forever?

Yeah, that's a great example. And we don't even need to think it as the location of the item being changed. It really didn't exist until the players found it.

Sure it did.

The item will simply be found in the next reasonable location the characters will look and in which it can reasonably be found.

And when there are no such other reasonable places it could be found? Because, as I said, I make my treasures actually tied to the world and lore. I don't hand out yawn-inducing +1 swords. I make magic items magical, and treasures wondrous.

Another example would be an NPC who communicates with the PCs via a projected image. The PCs can’t capture or kill this NPC so does that make this situation a railroad? Or can we acknowledge that restricting some options doesn’t mean all options are restricted?

Did you do the work to justify an NPC that communicates by projected image? Were the players at least potentially able to figure out that it was a projected image, even if they failed to take the chance to do so? If yes to both, then it's not railroading. Some restriction of options is not the same as "event X definitely happens, regardless of any player choices." If you failed to actually justify an NPC doing that, then honestly that's a pretty crappy move on your part as DM, not much better than a schoolyard game of "let's pretend" where a child asserts they have an infinity+1 shield, so the other child's infinity sword bounces off. If you did that, but prevented even the possibility of the players discovering it in advance regardless of the level of effort they put in to discover it, then you're basically bait-and-switching your players (which is VERY DIFFERENT from bait-and-switching their characters, I should note!), and that really doesn't look good either.

Allowing your players to make assumptions and later revealing those assumptions false is not a bad thing; it's key to having revelations at all, most of the time. But ensuring that your players do have false assumptions, and taking whatever means necessary to make sure those assumptions never falter until the moment you permit them to see the truth, is just...bad practice.

I think there's alot of assumptions that players can't tell if things are getting shuffled around, but its adding extra work ensuring that they can't tell.

Agreed. I'm completely convinced it's not possible to keep up that charade forever, no matter how much extra work you do.

If you have a bunch of generic encounters everywhere, sure, shuffling stuff around can be easy. But if you have your encounters married to your worldbuilding, its much harder.

Further, this is why the "but random encounters!" objection doesn't hold water. That is, the random encounter table still represents something in the world: what creatures are present there. A smart adventuring party researches this sort of thing in advance, to the extent that they're able, meaning it is entirely possible for the players to know ahead of time what they might encounter. This enables informed decision-making: the place they go to "exists" in some stable form, and is open to player investigation and preparation (the DM does not radically and arbitrarily modify it on the fly; any modification is always with cause, and discoverable by the players.)

If the cultists are looking for the ancient sword and they know its location, why are they in The City of Brass when the sword is not? And then you'll have to improvise. Having great improv skills are a talent but most players can tell the difference between things on-the-fly and things pre-written because of quality. Your descriptions falter or you give details you need to take back.

Rather, having a well-known merchant living in the City of Brass sell a map to the sword's location both gives players a hook and could possibly direct them back to the cultists, who are in their proper locations.

Completely agreed, though I prefer the method you noted later (that there is worldbuilding behind why this sword is present in this location outside this city and guarded by these cultists.)

I certainly don’t care!

A significant number of people do--rather a lot, in fact. If you do not care, but others do, what is the reasonable response? Should it be telling us, "stop caring about that!"? Or should it be, "Alright, well, I don't really get why that's a problem, but if it is, we can address it."?

I would say this isn’t a railroad. Players have tons of choice… just not whether the PCs are approached from the outset. It’s an encounter rooted in time not in place.

If a world exists around the PCs, such things must happen. I absolutely agree that it's not railroading, because the players always have the opportunity to simply ignore a hook if it's not interesting to them. My players, for example, had largely ignored the black dragon trying to take over the city--they had bigger fish to fry, more or less--but doing so allowed that black dragon to flex more, entrench more, take over more of the city's underworld. By ignoring this danger, it becomes more complex, more interesting, and more able to threaten things they care about. This is not railroading, at least as far as I'm concerned, because it specifically IS a matter of respecting the players' choices. Bad things that go unaddressed often get worse. I won't be a huge dick and make these problems unsolvable, but solving them will become harder as a result of neglect.

I guess as a DM I’m always forcing things on my players, my job is to get in the way of their goals to provide a challenging game. I guess I really don’t understand why the source of the challenge matters, I’m just playing my part. I absolutely agree that if I insist on an encounter the players are explicitly trying to avoid through choices they make then that would be unfair. But this is not that.

What do you mean by "always forcing things on your players"? Furnishing opportunities is not at all the same as "forcing," at least as I would use the word. For me, the source of the challenge matters enormously because being able to make informed decisions and learn from them is core to the "D&D-like" TTRPG experience: in order to make informed decisions, I have to have actual information (aka, stuff that can't just be changed whenever the DM feels like it, justification be damned), and in order to learn from those decisions, the consequences thereof must actually follow from what I did, not gated by "the DM feels like letting these consequences through" or any other such interference. If the world changes under my feet without any way for me to know or learn, then I'm just a rat running in a wheel, not a valued participant, at which point I might as well go play in a Skinner box MMO.

And...fundamentally, I don't see how this ISN'T that. You're making the encounter happen, in the same way at the same time of the same thing, in two distinct places, despite those places being presented as a real choice.

Also, let's consider another super common form of 'illusionism' that most GMs do and do not really consider it as such though it is basically the same thing than the quantum ogre, except the thing illusionised is not the location it is the time. The interesting thing happens when the PCs are around, regardless of when exactly that is. I'm pretty sure almost every GM does this.

I absolutely do not do this! The players choose to go to places that they find out about, so of course interesting things happen there. But the world rolls on without them. They have returned to town several times only to find out that Serious Business happened while they were away. (Most of the time, it's the Sultana receiving another extravagant gift from her mysterious Secret Admirer, but sometimes it's other stuff, e.g. the black dragon gang as mentioned above.) The world is not exclusively centered on the PCs. But they are movers and shakers now--they've earned the right to be!--so, in general, things are either already happening in the places they go to, or are about to happen. But things also happen elsewhere, too.

Here's a what-if for you: what if the pre-written module says there in fact is an ogre down each path? That is to say, if the party go down one path and then the other they will meet two ogres, one at a time.

Is the choice of path thus invalidated? Is it invaliated if local rumours tell of an ogre down the south path but the locals don't (yet) know about the one on the north path, and the party use those rumours to inform their choice of path?

I did actually cover this already upthread. Long story short, it's fine. Maybe the ogre starts at B (left) and goes to A (right), so players meet him quick going one way and way later the other. Maybe the ogre is in neither place, but the ogre's scouts spot the party at wherever they go, so the ogre comes to them from elsewhere. Maybe this is Ogre Country (or similar before-the-fact justification) so a well-informed party expects some ogres might show up anywhere.

The rumors thing is...complicated. Incomplete info is part of a well-grounded world--few are omniscient. But unless there were really, really good well-grounded reasons why that info should be incomplete, I would feel really bad about the party fundamentally basing a decision (one that sounds important to them!) on incomplete info that turned out to be dead wrong. That would feel much more like coercing my players than like giving them a mystery to solve or a puzzle to piece together.

As an example in my own game, there's an NPC who is secretly one of the BBEGs. The party super dislikes him, but they work with him because he's useful, and they have a good idea what moves he'll make....based on his fictional public persona. This is a well-grounded "incomplete information" bit, because the NPC in question has taken great pains to conceal this identity. The players could figure it out, but he's made it tough for good reason. I don't see this as invalidating choices. The "avoid the ogre" example, on the other hand, is at least perilously close to railroading, and thus in need of a lot more effort on my part to keep it above-board.

But they don't. This is not that sort of a thing.

...why not?

 

[Don Durito]

Just on random encounters.

It's a common misconception that randomness is antithetical to linearity.

If a game consists of A-Random Ecounter-B-Random Encounter-C etc, then from the players perspective it isn't really any different to the GM having prepped all those encounters and forced the players through them. It may amuse the DM, because it's all novel to him, but it doesn't really matter to the players.

This is why random encounters work best when:

A:They present a risk which is a consequence of previous player decisions, usually to go somewhere or do something. If your adventure requires the PCs to travel between two points then you might as well prep the encounters on the road too.
B: They themselves are designed to present the players with a decision point. "4 goblins attack" is a poor random encounter and leads to the perception they are just filler.. "4 goblins begin following you" presents a decision.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Sure it did.

Nope. It is an imaginary thing and the players didn't know of it. To them it didn't exist.

And when there are no such other reasonable places it could be found? Because, as I said, I make my treasures actually tied to the world and lore. I don't hand out yawn-inducing +1 swords. I make magic items magical, and treasures wondrous.

Yes, me too. And they can still be found in many different places. Like Bilbo found the mightiest Ring of Power completely randomly in some goblin cave. And yes, there was a narrative for how that ring had ended up there, but Tolkien invented details of that after writing the Hobbit.

I tie all of my magic items (even the very first ones discovered by the party) into very specific narrative and world-built things. With very few exceptions, you basically couldn't find them elsewhere, because...that wouldn't make any narrative sense.

But you invented that narrative in the first place. You didn't need to invent narrative that ties them to a specific place.

If there's something important enough that I don't want the players to miss it, I have PLENTY of tools to make sure they don't. As an example, recently the party had searched through a tower left behind by the ancient pre-elf civilization, and failed to search the bottom floor (probably because they'd entered it at the end of the previous session and just forgot). As they were leaving, I told the half-elf in the party that he could feel that there was something he was missing, the barest inkling of his magical senses (because, being the only "mundane" party member, he hasn't developed his magical senses normally--but this is something very specific to his lineage and story).

Sorry, but this sounds rather awkward and railroady to me. Oi player, you missed my clue so I decided that your character suddenly develops a magical spider sense to detect this one specific item! Yeah, I'll stick to my method, thanks.

I absolutely do not do this! The players choose to go to places that they find out about, so of course interesting things happen there. But the world rolls on without them. They have returned to town several times only to find out that Serious Business happened while they were away. (Most of the time, it's the Sultana receiving another extravagant gift from her mysterious Secret Admirer, but sometimes it's other stuff, e.g. the black dragon gang as mentioned above.) The world is not exclusively centered on the PCs. But they are movers and shakers now--they've earned the right to be!--so, in general, things are either already happening in the places they go to, or are about to happen. But things also happen elsewhere, too.

Of course sometimes things progress on their own, usually when the starting point has already been already observed by the players. But you literally cannot track goings and comings of every person in the setting. Sometimes things must just start when the PCs happen to be there.

...why not?

Why this thing is not another thing? Because that wasn't its purpose.

 

[CleverNickName]

While we're discussing theory and DM motives, how about this one:

The DM places a treasure map somewhere in the world, and it falls into the players' hands. It's a map of a mysterious tropical island with a bright red X on it, and the notes on the back describes an amazing treasure hoard waiting to be claimed.

The party has the map examined by a historian, and it checks out as authentic. They have it checked by a professional cartographer, who confirms the coordinates and confirms that such a place exists. They research the name of the map's author, and it checks out as well. So the party hires a boat and travels to the island...but they don't find any treasure at the bright red X. Despite their best efforts and careful planning, the party is empty-handed.

For all the players know, the treasure map could have been a fake, or it might have been tampered with. Any one of the experts they consulted might have been wrong, or paid off by an unknown competitor. The treasure might have already been looted decades ago, there are countless things that could have gone wrong. Now the party has wasted months of time and thousands of goldpieces on a fruitless expedition.

Of course, the DM knew all along that the party was never going to find any treasure. She has very good reasons for putting the party on that ship and bringing them to this island, but those reasons haven't yet revealed themselves.

So: have the players been "railroaded"?

 

[Asisreo]

Just on random encounters.

It's a common misconception that randomness is antithetical to linearity.

If a game consists of A-Random Ecounter-B-Random Encounter-C etc, then from the players perspective it isn't really any different to the GM having prepped all those encounters and forced the players through them. It may amuse the DM, because it's all novel to him, but it doesn't really matter to the players.

This is why random encounters work best when:

A:They present a risk which is a consequence of previous player decisions, usually to go somewhere or do something. If your adventure requires the PCs to travel between two points then you might as well prep the encounters on the road too.
B: They themselves are designed to present the players with a decision point. "4 goblins attack" is a poor random encounter and leads to the perception they are just filler.. "4 goblins begin following you" presents a decision.

Another thing on Random Encounters:

Random Encounters do not mean shallow encounters, they should be just as fleshed out as a regular encounter of the same magnitude. "You see a maiden meditating on a rock at the center of the lake" is only the beginning of the encounter description. It might just be the encounter's title. Why is the maiden meditating on the rock? Where did she come from? Is she a spirit? Is she friendly or hostile on first contact? What's her relevance to the current adventure? What information would she have? What's her personality and goals?

All of this included in a "Random" encounter, making it seem not so random from the player's perspective.

Of course sometimes things progress on their own, usually when the starting point has already been observed by the players. But you literally cannot track goings and comings of every person in the setting. Sometimes things must just start when the PCs happen to be there.

You can't track everything like a universal watcher, but you can predict what happens next with a fully fleshed out world. All characters, even extras, should have personal goals. Even if its an extra that only wants to keep farming and living a simple life, that's a goal that will allow you, as a DM, to predict where he'd go on-the-fly. This is an easy case: stay at his farm or return to it if he's not already there.

For NPC's like the leader of the Hunter's Brigade, he may be at their base but he might also be near the forest where they heard a mighty Dire Bear lives, and he's on the hunt. You can also improvise that since you already know the character. Putting pre-written elbow grease in your campaign makes improvising so much easier without having to shuffle things around everywhere.

 

[Asisreo]

While we're discussing theory and DM motives, how about this one:

The DM places a treasure map somewhere in the world, and it falls into the players' hands. It's a map of a mysterious tropical island with a bright red X on it, and the ship log on the back describes an amazing treasure hoard waiting to be claimed.

The party has the map examined by a historian, and it checks out as authentic. They have it checked by a professional cartographer, who confirms the coordinates and confirms that such a place exists. They research the name of the map's author, and it checks out as well. So the party hires a boat and travels to the island...but they don't find any treasure at the bright red X. Despite their best efforts and careful planning, the party is empty-handed.

For all the players know, the treasure map could have been a fake, or it might have been tampered with. Any one of the experts they consulted might have been wrong, or paid off by an unknown competitor. The treasure might have already been looted decades ago, there are countless things that could have gone wrong. Now the party has wasted months of time and thousands of goldpieces on a fruitless expedition.

Of course, the DM knew all along that the party was never going to find any treasure. She has very good reasons for putting the party on that ship and bringing them to this island, but those reasons haven't yet revealed themselves.

So: have the players been "railroaded"?

Depends. Did the DM actually have a reason why there was a fake treasure map. If there was a in-narrative reason like a magical effect on the map, forcing the map making experts to believe its real, it would be fine so long as the DM also knows who faked the map and why (preferably revealing that information to the players eventually).

If the DM just made a sudden, indiscernible treasure map appear and basically convinced the players that they should follow it even though there's no real reason for an expert to believe this false map was real, yeah, I'd say that's railroading.

 

[CleverNickName]

Depends. Did the DM actually have a reason why there was a fake treasure map. If there was a in-narrative reason like a magical effect on the map, forcing the map making experts to believe its real, it would be fine so long as the DM also knows who faked the map and why (preferably revealing that information to the players eventually).

If the DM just made a sudden, indiscernible treasure map appear and basically convinced the players that they should follow it even though there's no real reason for an expert to believe this false map was real, yeah, I'd say that's railroading.

For the sake of the exercise, the players don't know, and cannot know, and will never know, what those reasons are until the DM reveals them. For all intent and purpose, it's just as likely that the treasure map was 100% authentic and someone beat them to the treasure, as it is to have been an elaborate forgery or the work of a trickster god.

The exercise is asking: does "railroading" depend on what the players discover and when they discover it? Is "railroading" only observable in hindsight?

 

[Asisreo]

For the sake of the exercise, the players don't know, and cannot know, and will never know, what those reasons are until the DM reveals them. For all intent and purpose, it's just as likely that the treasure map was 100% authentic and someone beat them to the treasure, as it is to have been an elaborate forgery or the work of a trickster god.

The exercise is asking: does "railroading" depend on what the players discover and when they discover it?

I'd say if the DM actually has information about why the map was made the way it was yet they refuse to ever give the players a chance to obtain that information no matter what choices the players made, I'd say that's railroading because their agency was, or was planned to be, removed.

If the Wizard living in the Tower wrote that map and the players decided to check out the tower yet the DM suddenly locks all the doors with impenetrable, unknockable locks or throws it into a demiplane at the last minute, the players had their agency in that situation removed.