D&D General Why defend railroading?

[Lanefan]

The reason for that is the 13 year campaign though. That's not a universal situation. Everyone knows each other really well.

If I'm running an open game at a meet-up I'm a lot more pro-active in having the DM job be also a leadership position then I am with either of my longer term regular groups.

I'll only run for people I either already know or who have been vouched for by someone I know.

And it hasn't been the same players for all 13 years. There's been turnover - a total of 12* players have each had multiple characters during that time.

* - there was a 13th, but she was a one-session wonder brought in by two existing players; she rolled up a character, stayed for that session, seemed to enjoy it from all I or anyone else could tell, and was never seen or heard from again by any of us.

 

[Don Durito]

You guy do realise that by neutral arbiter in this specific context I meant the GM should not just resolve all actions of a PC without any regard to how the rest of the group may feel about the situation.

Player: "My Barbarian is going to rage and start killing everyone in this town, men women, children and dogs".
DM: "Ok make a to hit roll".

There's a basic failure of leadership here. (Unless the DM really knows that all the other players are on board with this happening).

 

[Hussar]

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.

Oh, totally agree. And, in hind sight, it certainly could have been handled better. At the time, it was the fact that we had spent the better part of three sessions (among other things) doing this and she never even hinted that it was a problem. We were all completely blindsided.

But, as an example of railroading, it makes a pretty good one, no?

 

[Lanefan]

Maintaining neutrality is why I prefer to have adventures prepared in advance. I don't feel you can be neutral if you make stuff up of the cuff. "The shop is guarded by four stone golems. You don't have any magic weapons?". I feel it's a lot easier to be neutral if I have all the defences written down on paper before the adventure starts.

Agreed to a point, again.

It's impossible to prep for every possibility. Sure, hit the obvious ones, but after that my main criteria is does what I'm making up make reasonable sense when held against the generally extablished setting.

So, yes, 4 stone golems guarding a small-town scroll shop is way over the top. But a couple of small alert dogs that'll yap their furry little heads off if a stranger comes in when master's not there? And a local constable who's been asked to check the shop if he hears the dogs yapping for no obvious reason? Yeah, that makes sense in a small town.

 

[Hussar]

Just to be clear, there wasn't an issue with the group since the entire group was on board with this and we all worked together for several sessions to do this. It wasn't something we sprang on the DM spur of the moment. And, had she simply said, "Please don't do this" I think we would have been fine with that. But, instead, it was a complete railroad, totally unbelievable events and a complete waste of everyone's time.

IOW, I learned a lot about how not to DM from that group.

 

[Lanefan]

You guy do realise that by neutral arbiter in this specific context I meant the GM should not just resolve all actions of a PC without any regard to how the rest of the group may feel about the situation.

Player: "My Barbarian is going to rage and start killing everyone in this town, men women, children and dogs".
DM: "Ok make a to hit roll".

There's a basic failure of leadership here. (Unless the DM really knows that all the other players are on board with this happening).

There's no failure of leadership here at all.

There's a failure of DMing, in that the response should have been "OK, make a to-hit roll. What are the rest of you doing?" and let the rest of the party - if present* - respond in character as those characters would.

* - truth be told, if there's others present I'd usually give them some sort of surprise roll to see if the Barbarian's psycho turn catches them off guard, as they otherwise might be able to stop/restrain/clobber him before he does anything too rash.

 

[Don Durito]

There's no failure of leadership here at all.

There's a failure of DMing, in that the response should have been "OK, make a to-hit roll. What are the rest of you doing?" and let the rest of the party - if present* - respond in character as those characters would.

* - truth be told, if there's others present I'd usually give them some sort of surprise roll to see if the Barbarian's psycho turn catches them off guard, as they otherwise might be able to stop/restrain/clobber him before he does anything too rash.

Well we'll have to disagree. As a player I'd be walking out of the door.

EdIt: Well probably not as a first response. I'd instead be initating the conversation the GM should have done. But I'd have little expectation of coming back to the game.

 

[TheSword]

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.

The social contract. I don’t have evil players in my games or PvP.

But on a broader point, DMs create opportunities for PCs to acquire resources in a balanced and level appropriate way in order to make the game more fun for players. A wizard character is empowered by the presence of a scroll merchant with a range of spell levels. The scroll merchant also adds potential solutions to problems the party might come across - needing comprehend languages for instance or a knock spell to open a tomb.

Now if that scroll merchant is robbed and his stock of scrolls stolen the character breaks that balance. I then have three choices - increase the challenge of the scroll merchant with increased difficulty (I’m not sure what difficulty would justify a dozen scrolls as I certainly wouldn’t give that many out to even a difficult encounter) or I find a way to reduce the reward… which annoys the thieves. Or I accept the players now have a large number of scrolls that unbalance the spellcaster’s abilities. The end result of which is that I stop putting people who sell high cost items in the game. The problem is made much worse in earlier editions where magic economy is far more substantial.

In short, there is an understanding that if I give players access to purchasable resources they don’t abuse that. Let’s be clear I’m not invalidating anything because my players don’t try to do it. They aren’t murder hobos. If they did try, I would have an out of game conversation about whether we all had the right expectations and the wider consequences of their player decisions. It’s not my ‘duty’ as DM to put up with whatever behavior my players want like a human wobble toy.

I wouldn’t allow the players to use the magic item purchase downtime rules to find magic items that they then steal them either. If you want that kind of thing then go and play a game where that’s the idea game or an evil campaign.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

So, yes, 4 stone golems guarding a small-town scroll shop is way over the top.

Why? You need to be a high level wizard to make the scrolls, which means you can also make stone golems.

I would rule that small towns don't have scroll shops.

 

[TheSword]

Why? You need to be a high level wizard to make the scrolls, which means you can also make stone golems.

I would rule that small towns don't have scroll shops.

Which in turn penalizes the players.

Whereas if there is a general understanding that players don’t rob the merchants put there to enable them, everything works smoothly.

A lot of this depends on whether you think PCs are special in your world or not. If PCs are special (as I think they are) then it explains why PCs can easily rob a local shop but the local thieves guild can’t (because they are all NPCs with NPC level stats). There’s no break in world immersion.