D&D General Why defend railroading?

[EzekielRaiden]

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

I don't see this as an application of force, but perhaps I am not using the word the same way you are.

I don't ad-hoc invent obstacles simply so that there are obstacles. When I run a game, I present a world to my players--one that I work to give them reason to invest into, to care about. That world also includes things that would, logically, threaten the things the players are invested in or care about. Sometimes, the threats take actions that the players will want to stop, if I have successfully gotten them invested in and caring about things in the world. Sometimes, the players will actively seek out these threats, to prevent them from trying to do something. Sometimes, neutral events occur or neutral opportunities appear, that the players might be interested in due to relating to their other interests.

I do not see any of the above as "forcing" anything. As I see it, I can only woo and threaten. If the players chose one day to pull up sticks and just leave, never looking back....I'd roll with it. I'd be saddened (and probably a little angry), but I'd roll with it as long as I felt I could.

Would you be willing to give an example of "forcing obstacles in the way of their goals"? Perhaps that will be useful.

Hiding it from the players--I'd expect probably in most cases, and because its assumed in most cases that it would be less fun if they know it. Neither of these is completely a given, however.

I mean, they may not be absolutely incontrovertible assumptions, but I think we agree that all but the most ardent, die-hard pro-illusionism DMs would agree that nearly all groups have at least one player that would feel rather disheartened by finding out that the game relied on illusionism regularly. I mean, literally every pro-illusionism discussion I've ever seen emphasizes the need to keep it a secret from the players. Nearly every person advising how to use it well makes extremely clear that, even if you don't think it would upset your players, you should avoid letting them find out, because it might and that would be very bad if it happened.

And that's really what completes my anti-illusionism argument. In the long-term, you can't maintain it, so you probably shouldn't. And in the short term, if everyone who advocates for it admits that you should take any means necessary to keep it a secret....maybe you should just not do it? It's one thing to preserve a mystery or create suspense--that's deceiving the characters. It's quite another to present false "choices" (not merely fictional, but outright false ones) and deceptive "consequences" (not merely made-up, but outright deceptive). I do tons of the former, there are several ongoing mysteries that the party is slowly working to uncover, and we semi-recently had an actual murder mystery situation.

Do you have any examples of this actually happening in a game, or is it a giant strawman?

That I have personally witnessed? No. But I've brought players back to the hobby (if you allow Dungeon World to count) who experienced stuff like this, yes. And I've had at least one player who feared that I was going to do this to them, enough that they went out of their way to take precautions against it, and needed an awful lot of encouragement to relax about it. After a couple sessions they realized such fears were unnecessary, thankfully. As I've said, I heavily prioritize making my players' vision a reality.

Just to play with the Rakshasa example here for a second. Since Rakshasa in 5e are immune to any spell of 6th level or lower (unless it chooses to be affected) is it still railroading that the players, after casting "Detect Magic, Dispel Magic, True Seeing, and Identify" when none of those spells would work on a Rakshasa, are ambushed by the Rakshasa and nothing is revealed beforehand?

See, this is the issue I'm seeing here with these overly broad definitions. How is it possibly railroading to have the Rakshasa not be detected by the PC's here? They did nothing that actually WOULD detect a Rakshasa. So, is it railroading?

Like I said above, is every use of a lich railroading since you have to destroy the phylactery to kill a lich? Is it railroading to use lycanthropes against a party that isn't carrying silver weapons? Where do you draw the line?

Neither of these are railroading, and I don't really see why you think they're such edge cases. Using a monster the way it's written in the book, as long as it was at least possible to find out about it, isn't railroading. There are plenty of ways to learn about a rakshasa that don't involve targeting the rakshasa itself with spells of 6th level or lower, unless the DM is simply killing every other means of investigating....which would be railroading. Liches being phylactery-based is pretty much a meme at this point, even people who don't play D&D know about that sort of thing....but if you somehow have a group that doesn't know the first thing about liches, it is on you as DM to furnish the opportunity to investigate (and at least some open hints that investigation is worthwhile), even if the players don't take it.

Hell, we don't even have to go all that deep for this. The lich and the rakshasa are just more complicated trolls. Puzzle creatures can be 100% fine, if the players were furnished with the opportunity to learn about them (whether or not they took it) and a reason to think that learning would be a good idea (even if they dismissed it). This isn't some crazy edge case.

Edit: Maybe a better way to present the lich thing. Destroying the phylactery is a goal. You OPENLY tell the players that's what has to happen to make this thing die and stay dead. It's on them to figure out HOW to make that happen. That's not railroading; that's telling the players the condition they need to meet in order to win, and letting them figure out how to get there. If handled correctly, it is in fact almost the opposite of a railroad: you support whatever means the players might take, within their characters' abilities, that would reasonbly get them to that destination. Having a destination does not a railroad make; it's a necessary condition, but not a sufficient one.

 

[Hussar]

Was that unreasonable? Did the PCs have any means of tracking him or catching up with him?

That's your takeaway? Not the fact that he conveniently left in the middle of the night the day before we robbed him? Never minding the ranger we had in the party - it's not like tracking is that hard. It's Keep on the Borderlands, there's only one road. But, apparently, that is one HELL of a fast donkey and wagon that we couldn't possibly catch up.

Yes, this was unreasonable. The ONLY reason the DM did this was to keep the treasure out of our greedy little hands. IOW, this was a pre-determined event based not on anything in the game, but because the DM had a specific outcome in mind. No chance of any of us noticing that he left in the night - never minding the fact that the drawbridge is up during the night because no one is allowed to enter or leave the Keep during the night. He, without warning or reason, pulled up stakes, picked up his wagon and donkey, climbed the wall of the Keep, lowered the donkey down on the other side followed by the cart, scaled down the outside of the Keep, all without a single guard or anyone noticing, and made such fantastic time that the party of seasoned adventurers couldn't possibly catch up to him.

Do you think this was reasonable?

 

[Hussar]

Sorry @EzekielRaiden - maybe I wasn't clear. I very, very much agree with you that this is not even remotely railroading to use a specific monster. Heck, it's not even railroading if you don't tell the players they have to destroy the phylactery. They can always find that out later.

 

[billd91]

That's your takeaway? Not the fact that he conveniently left in the middle of the night the day before we robbed him? Never minding the ranger we had in the party - it's not like tracking is that hard. It's Keep on the Borderlands, there's only one road. But, apparently, that is one HELL of a fast donkey and wagon that we couldn't possibly catch up.

Yes, this was unreasonable. The ONLY reason the DM did this was to keep the treasure out of our greedy little hands. IOW, this was a pre-determined event based not on anything in the game, but because the DM had a specific outcome in mind. No chance of any of us noticing that he left in the night - never minding the fact that the drawbridge is up during the night because no one is allowed to enter or leave the Keep during the night. He, without warning or reason, pulled up stakes, picked up his wagon and donkey, climbed the wall of the Keep, lowered the donkey down on the other side followed by the cart, scaled down the outside of the Keep, all without a single guard or anyone noticing, and made such fantastic time that the party of seasoned adventurers couldn't possibly catch up to him.

Do you think this was reasonable?

It was unreasonable. A more reasonable approach would have been for the DM to say "Guys, I don't want to turn this into a heist game. I want you guys to do (semi-) heroic things, not rob the local population. If you want that, you want a different DM." But it has been my experience that a lot of DMs and players don't communicate like that (or at least didn't back in the day) because they don't want to make waves with the group and so end up with dysfunctional in-game approaches to differing expectation problems like the aforementioned railroad.

 

[Don Durito]

Just to play with the Rakshasa example here for a second. Since Rakshasa in 5e are immune to any spell of 6th level or lower (unless it chooses to be affected) is it still railroading that the players, after casting "Detect Magic, Dispel Magic, True Seeing, and Identify" when none of those spells would work on a Rakshasa, are ambushed by the Rakshasa and nothing is revealed beforehand?

See, this is the issue I'm seeing here with these overly broad definitions. How is it possibly railroading to have the Rakshasa not be detected by the PC's here? They did nothing that actually WOULD detect a Rakshasa. So, is it railroading?

Like I said above, is every use of a lich railroading since you have to destroy the phylactery to kill a lich? Is it railroading to use lycanthropes against a party that isn't carrying silver weapons? Where do you draw the line?

To me this depends mostly on how it feels to the player. I'm not particularly interested in if it is railroading technically, but a Rakshasa is a monster the DM needs to handle with care, or it may feel like railroading.

And in the end there is no neutral court the DM can appeal to.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Sorry @EzekielRaiden - maybe I wasn't clear. I very, very much agree with you that this is not even remotely railroading to use a specific monster. Heck, it's not even railroading if you don't tell the players they have to destroy the phylactery. They can always find that out later.

My apologies for misunderstanding then. (I admit, I was a bit confused reading some of your other posts, so I had a suspicion...but I figured it best to let you speak for yourself.)

It was unreasonable. A more reasonable approach would have been for the DM to say "Guys, I don't want to turn this into a heist game. I want you guys to do (semi-) heroic things, not rob the local population. If you want that, you want a different DM." But it has been my experience that a lot of DMs and players don't communicate like that (or at least didn't back in the day) because they don't want to make waves with the group and so end up with dysfunctional in-game approaches to differing expectation problems like the aforementioned railroad.

Yeah. Far, far too many refuse to speak about things that should be spoken of, and devolve into deeply dysfunctional behavior as a result. I still genuinely do not understand why people do this. It's not even that hard. But fear of rocking the boat or being a party pooper silences a great many vitally-needed things...far beyond mere gaming.

 

[TheSword]

That's your takeaway? Not the fact that he conveniently left in the middle of the night the day before we robbed him? Never minding the ranger we had in the party - it's not like tracking is that hard. It's Keep on the Borderlands, there's only one road. But, apparently, that is one HELL of a fast donkey and wagon that we couldn't possibly catch up.

Yes, this was unreasonable. The ONLY reason the DM did this was to keep the treasure out of our greedy little hands. IOW, this was a pre-determined event based not on anything in the game, but because the DM had a specific outcome in mind. No chance of any of us noticing that he left in the night - never minding the fact that the drawbridge is up during the night because no one is allowed to enter or leave the Keep during the night. He, without warning or reason, pulled up stakes, picked up his wagon and donkey, climbed the wall of the Keep, lowered the donkey down on the other side followed by the cart, scaled down the outside of the Keep, all without a single guard or anyone noticing, and made such fantastic time that the party of seasoned adventurers couldn't possibly catch up to him.

Do you think this was reasonable?

Yeah you did the right thing leading the player revolt, because if I was your DM I would have quit anyway!

Players who try to rob the scroll merchant rather than go adventuring to get the treasure to buy the scrolls would not last long in one of my games.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

That's your takeaway? Not the fact that he conveniently left in the middle of the night the day before we robbed him?

He saw some shifty looking customers hanging round his shop and didn't trust the local guards to be able to protect him. It's no wonder he did a runner!

Of course, the truth is, the DM didn't have the skill to create a jewellery store heist adventure on the spare of the moment. And given that most DMs are draftees who only do the hardest job in the game because no one else will, it could be you had unreasonable expectations of their ability?

Which is why Keep on the Borderlands is a bad adventure. It doesn't give the PCs any motivation to adventure, beyond a vague "get rich quick". In which case knocking over the jewellery store is at least as sensible a decision as to go into a hole in the ground and kill some monsters. Yet the adventure only provides the DM with guidance for dealing with PCs who make the irrational choice to go monster hunting.

Running a story driven adventure isn't about dictating to players what to do, it about creating a situation and then predicting the most likely path the PCs will take. Because people don't choose at random. Some options are clearly better, and some are clearly worse, and PCs are most likely to choose a better option than a worse one. If the world is about to be destroyed by a giant asteroid, then trying to stop the asteroid is clearly a better decision than ignoring it.

If you start from the idea that player characters are heroes* then provide a call to adventure (help me Obi-Wan Kenobi, you are my only hope) then the PCs are most likely to heed the call, because that is what heroes do. You then provide a breadcrumb trail that the can choose to follow - not because they have no choice, but because it is the most sensible thing for the PCs to do in the circumstances, and because the players want to find out what happens next. Of course that doesn't entirely free the DM of the need to create stuff on the spare of the moment (or perform major rewrites between sessions) since the players can often come up with better ideas that the DM hasn't thought of, in which case you just roll with it, and remember to reward players for cleverness, not punish them.


*other, non-heroic options are also available.

 

[Lanefan]

It was unreasonable. A more reasonable approach would have been for the DM to say "Guys, I don't want to turn this into a heist game. I want you guys to do (semi-) heroic things, not rob the local population. If you want that, you want a different DM." But it has been my experience that a lot of DMs and players don't communicate like that (or at least didn't back in the day) because they don't want to make waves with the group and so end up with dysfunctional in-game approaches to differing expectation problems like the aforementioned railroad.

My take is that it was unreasonable, but from the opposite direction. In my view - and, sadly, I think this view was more common in days of old than it is now - it's not the DM's place to shut the players down like you're describing above. Instead, I see it as the DM's job to roll with whatever the players try to have their PCs do, and have the setting and-or NPCs react accordingly.

They decide to try and rob the scroll shop? Fine. Play it out. Figure out what (if any) theft defenses the shop has, make them tell you their plan, then neutrally and fairly give it whatever chance of success it deserves and let the dice fall where they may.

And even more importantly, let the consequences fall where they may. Maybe the party gets clean away with it - unless they're dumb enough to try selling those scrolls in the same town - and if so, good for them. Maybe they bungle the job, or get caught, in which case they're arrested or run out of town or subjected to whatever punishment thieves receive in that setting/locale. It's a simple risk-reward proposition, and the fact that it's not the risk-reward proposition put forward by the adventure is irrelevant.

Telling the players how to play (as per your above "I want you guys to do (semi-)heroic things" example) is in my view just as bad as the other forms of railroading we've seen posited here.

TL-DR - it's a fact of life that DMs build settings so players can break them.

 

[Lanefan]

Players who try to rob the scroll merchant rather than go adventuring to get the treasure to buy the scrolls would not last long in one of my games.

Why not?

Just because they're not engaging with your setting in the manner you desire doesn't mean they're not engaging with it at all - quite the contrary, in this case. Here, they're fully engaged, only in a different and unexpected-by-you way: they've thrown you a curveball and I see it as being your-as-DM's duty to hit it by neutrally and fairly determinning the outcome of their actions just like you would any other actions they might undertake.