D&D General Why defend railroading?

[Ovinomancer]

Okay, @Asisreo, and @Greg Benage, I have a question for you. You've essentially staked the position that the GM restricting players to one course of action is railroading. Using that, how it establishing that a mcguffin is in Fort A not also this? I mean, if the players decide to search in Town X for the mcguffin, it won't be there, no matter what they do, because it's decided it's in Fort A. The players are required to go to Fort A if they wish to be successful in recovering the mcguffin, right?

The point of this isn't to mock your play, but to point out that the arguments being used fail if you don't except your own play. If the issue is player agency, no matter what, then the ability to search for the mcguffin, and have a chance of success, anywhere is maximizing agency. And, before you claim this is ridiculous, there are popular games that actually work this way. The difference is that those games aren't about finding out what the GM thinks about the fiction, but instead finding out what happens together, GM included. Until a mcguffin is establish as in Fort A in the shared fiction (and GMs may be restricted from just doing this, depending on the stakes), it could be anywhere. Usually, bad locations or additional challenges are due not to GM pre-planning such, but do to failures of the players.

To give a play example, in the Blades game I play in, we were prompted to do a score for a powerful ally and were gathering information on the target. At this point, the only things established was that the target was likely on a large boat, and that the target was suspected of being a nasty paranormal thing. The goal was to expose it's existence or end it for our ally. So, we investigated. We rolled a number of failures, though, which prompted the GM to establish that the ship did not hire from the docks -- if they replaced crew no one knew how -- and that the ship was very tightly guarded and located in a private yard. Also, we learned that the ship actually did most of it's business out of the city (in Blades, this is a very bad thing) and only returned to berth for a few months between trips. This was all terrible news for us, because we were left with no good way to deal with the ship -- our crew is capable in a fight, but we're not great, and the only viable option for us was an assault.

What ended up happening is that we had to expend/risk additional resources and got a break - a check with consequence yielded that there was one former crewperson that had left the ship, but she was holed up with a cult in the Deadlands (outside the city, very bad). Still, best we had, so that's where we went, because we are actually decent at moving through dangerous places (the crew is Smugglers).

NONE of this was established or planned for. I couldn't be, because we might have succeeded at our gather info checks early on and then the ship wouldn't have been closed, and we could have snuck aboard or gotten hired aboard. These games change with the checks, with nothing established outside of play, so prep is meaningless in this case. And yet, we ended up with a seriously complicated plotline here. So, claiming that you cannot just search whereever is not required to be true, but is a choice that the GM is making and that restricts agency of the players.

Which, again, is just fine. Restricting agency is a requirement of a game -- you can't just do whatever you want, there has to be some structure. The thing is, though, that these structures are arbitrary not objective.

 

[robus]

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.

I simply mean that I’m constantly trying to get in their way. I’m forcing obstacles in the way of their goals.

 

[Greg Benage]

Okay, @Asisreo, and @Greg Benage, I have a question for you. You've essentially staked the position that the GM restricting players to one course of action is railroading. Using that, how it establishing that a mcguffin is in Fort A not also this? I mean, if the players decide to search in Town X for the mcguffin, it won't be there, no matter what they do, because it's decided it's in Fort A.

I'm not sure if you're serious? But...yes, restricting players to one course of action is railroading. And no, world-building and designing adventure locations or scenarios is not railroading.

I still feel like you must be pulling my leg, though.

 

[CleverNickName]

Sorry, meant to reply to this but got focus on Crimson Longinus. My core problem is mostly that....I just don't believe any DM is good enough to truly evade suspicion forever, and even making people suspicious is Bad News. Because if people suspect they're on an illusionism-based railroad, it's going to cause some damage, even if only a little. DMs are not infinitely clever, players outnumber them, and time and reflection are on the players' side, not the DM's. And even if it is only "observable" in hindsight, it is possible for players to start testing for it once they suspect it. For example, trying to intentionally make curveballs. Throwing more siutations at the DM where they have to think fast and invent stuff on the spot etc. A player can do that while remaining totally in-character (depending on the specific character, of course), and I just don't quite buy that any DM, let alone many DMs, can withstand such scrutiny for long.

TL;DR: The DM just has to mess up once for illusionism to be a problem. The players have the whole campaign to figure it out. The more you use it, the more likely the illusion falls, and the more work you must do to keep it secret. Maybe if you always run shortish games, you can dodge that bullet. I don't believe anyone can dodge it for longish ones, let alone full years (like my game has been).

You are right, of course, but this is all just theory. In theory, a DM could truly evade suspicion forever. It's not at all likely, but it is something that could happen. DMs are certainly not infinitely clever, but neither are the players. (And frankly? Not all players are going to care enough to get paranoid about it. If everyone is having fun, I don't see anyone getting wound up about what-ifs.)

I'm not saying that illusionism is good or bad, or that fixed plot points should or shouldn't be used. No endorsements or judgments here. It's just one of those things that can only be seen in hindsight, and maybe that is the part that bothers people the most. Some players will say "how dare you dupe me like that!" while others will say "whatever, could you maybe add a dragon to the script next time?"

 

[Don Durito]

If the argument against illusionism is that players will always find out eventually then there's no point discussing specific examples.

It could after all be theorectically fine in the abstract but practically a bad idea.

If you're going to argue that illusionism is bad in the specific then it really needs to be bad even if the players never realise.

 

[Malmuria]

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.

The Stygian Library is by the same author. Instead of a garden, it is a procedurally generated interdimensional library. Once you roll a room, you can come back to it, so by the end there is something of a map (and one the players should keep track of). The PCs go to the library to find a book they are looking for, and there are rules for determining if they find the book depending on how many rooms of the library they've explored. So I guess there would be the same potential criticisms. However, Gardens operates by faerie logic, and the library is an interdimensional space that is constantly shifting, so there are in-fiction reasons for it to be random

 

[Umbran]

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.

So, I again have to return to what agency and "meaningful choices" are.

If you tell them about the ogre, and they choose a path specifically to avoid the ogre, then maybe you have a point (unless there's actually a plot point about the ogre being able to know where they are planning to go, or somesuch).

But the meaning of that choice is based in their intention. If they don't know about the ogre, and aren't specifically trying to avoid it, the GM is not voiding their intention. Choices that are made in ignorance, that might as well be coin flips, do not have meaning for the GM to cancel.

 

[Asisreo]

That wasn't initially said, though. There's magic that the players can find and use to get answers if they want to verify it another way. If they don't opt to use those methods and then opt to go to the island instead of ignoring the map, that's on them. They had options and didn't use them.

It was clarified that the information is always secret until the DM decides to reveal it. In other words, nothing they do will successfully tell them whether the treasure is actually there without going there. It wasn't in the initial prompt but he clarified it in one of the replies.

Actually, he said that the map MIGHT have been fake, or maybe others got to the treasure first. In any case, he had something else interesting on that island for them, and I'll bet that it included different treasure.

If the DM knows when, where, and why the false map was created before the players engage, its fine. If the DM does not know, that means that the map had no other purpose than to force the players onto the island. They would have ignored it if the DM gave any indication it wasn't trustworthy, but the DM locked out any signs that the map was false from player view, even when they went out of their way to find it. Their choices didn't matter, they just chose the only option to investigate further: to find it.

Okay, @Asisreo, and @Greg Benage, I have a question for you. You've essentially staked the position that the GM restricting players to one course of action is railroading. Using that, how it establishing that a mcguffin is in Fort A not also this? I mean, if the players decide to search in Town X for the mcguffin, it won't be there, no matter what they do, because it's decided it's in Fort A. The players are required to go to Fort A if they wish to be successful in recovering the mcguffin, right?

I use the term "McGuffin" alot as well, but I never use them in my games. There are no required item that the players must obtain to prevent them from dying, or to succeed at any one goal. The existence of a McGuffin is railroading.

Rather, a helpful item is at a location and obtaining that item may make surviving or completing the next goal easier but its never required.

 

[Umbran]

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.

That sounds to me like the only valid events in the game world are in reaction to player actions. Nobody but the players can take initiative? The local lord cannot have their own reasons to toss people like the PCs in jail without first having interaction with them?

Thanks, but no thanks. The GM gets to create a world, and some folks in that world may have their own agendas and act on them, whether the players choose to be involved or not.

 

[Thomas Shey]

The location of the ogre has no bearing on it’s importance, difficulty or relevence.

In general, true. But in the context its been presented here its not been presented as anything but a one-off.

The ogre could have a useful item or be a lieutenant of a major foe. It might have captured a useful NPC ally, or have information to impart of its own accord. Defeating the ogre might mean not fighting it at its home base with its mate or in support of a BBEG. It might also be a potential ally of its own in games where ogres are not monolithically evil.

I don’t understand why the fact that the encounter is not tied to a specific place means it should be avoided.

Because someone might want to. They don't need a better reason.