D&D General Why defend railroading?

[Charlaquin]

The Impossible Thing Before Breakfast was brought up a few pages back. I think it's important to also consider Jesse Burneko's Second Impossible Thing Before Breakfast.

I consider both of these to be true :

1. It is impossible for the GM to control of the trajectory of the story while the other players control the protagonists/main characters.
2. It is impossible for the player of a PC to control the story while the GM controls the adversity they face.

There are a couple of ways we can skin this cat (if we are interested in narrative/story)

1. Embrace the things we each control and play to find out what happens when they both meet. Players of PCs play their characters like stolen cars and simply protagonize. GMs provide honest adversity. Lots of tension. Lots of risk.
2. Embrace the principles of improv theater. Lots of "Yes, And" and "No, But" style of collaboratively telling a story together.
3. Players subvert their play of their characters to the story the GM is trying to tell and the GM might weave in elements of their backstory, character concepts, desires for story arcs, etc.
4. Illusionism

None of these strategies gets away from the impossible things. They are just ameliorate the tension that exists between our narrative desires and the realities of gaming.

Interesting perspective. I certainly think embracing the distinct roles of player and GM and playing to see what happens when they interact is a viable strategy for resolving the apparent contradiction you lay out, but I’m not sure what you mean by “Players of PCs play their characters like stolen cars and simply protagonize.” Honest adversity is also a very loaded phrase. What does it mean for a GM, who has complete control over the world and everything in it besides the PCs to provide “honest adversity”? If the GM wishes the PCs to fail, they can insure they do so, which calls into question the honesty of any adversity they may provide.

The group improv strategy is a viable one as well, though I personally think it’s one that diminishes the game aspect of Roleplaying Game.

Strategy number 3 I can’t make sense of. I’d be interested to hear you expand more on what you envision this looking like.

Illusionism is another very loaded term. I question the use of it as a fourth strategy as opposed to a tool which may or may not be used in service of other strategies.

 

[Don Durito]

The Impossible Thing Before Breakfast was brought up a few pages back. I think it's important to also consider Jesse Burneko's Second Impossible Thing Before Breakfast.

I consider both of these to be true :

1. It is impossible for the GM to control of the trajectory of the story while the other players control the protagonists/main characters.
2. It is impossible for the player of a PC to control the story while the GM controls the adversity they face.

There are a couple of ways we can skin this cat (if we are interested in narrative/story)

1. Embrace the things we each control and play to find out what happens when they both meet. Players of PCs play their characters like stolen cars and simply protagonize. GMs provide honest adversity. Lots of tension. Lots of risk.
2. Embrace the principles of improv theater. Lots of "Yes, And" and "No, But" style of collaboratively telling a story together.
3. Players subvert their play of their characters to the story the GM is trying to tell and the GM might weave in elements of their backstory, character concepts, desires for story arcs, etc.
4. Illusionism

None of these strategies gets away from the impossible things. They are just ameliorate the tension that exists between our narrative desires and the realities of gaming.

Yes. That's basically what I had in mind when I said it wasn't necessarily impossible. I didn't mean that the contradiction didn't exist, just that there were certain approaches that can sort of work.

Notably I think 3 and 4 while they can somewhat work, are what I had in mind when I was talking about GM burnout and general shortage. If the GM is trying to weave individual character arcs and backstory and an overall story (instead of players creating backstory and then immediately acting on it) or trying to genuinely maintain illusionism (as opposed to everyone just going along with it for beer and pretzels fun) then well...I hope that GM enjoys doing homework, because it's a lot of work.

 

[TheSword]

I find the whole debate very bemusing. My approach to DM led storytelling is to provide a set of interesting events and places and then provide clues and hooks to entice players to investigate and interact with those events.

Most encounters will require players to perk up and take active interest. Either there is a quest giver of some form (If the town pays you will you go and investigate the tower with the strange lights.) Or clues will come to the PCs through rumours (Have you heard about the strange lights around the tower).

Other encounters will come to PCs (Cultists using the tower try to kidnap the PCs on the road. Or an escapee from the tower flees into the PCs path).

I don’t believe any of these methods of beginning encounters are railroading. The party can chose to engage or not. They can chose how to interact and that’s all the agency I expect as a P

As a DM I’m not a fan of end of the world gaming. Where it’s a case of accepting a quest or you die. That does seem like railroading. However I would also think it would extremely rare with experienced DM. (Even occasionally an apocalypse style campaign is fun too if you’re expecting it).

The suggestion that because the chance of an encounter isn’t random, or has been picked by the DM it becomes railroading seems bizarre to me. That’s the game… encountering things and then responding to them for good or ill.

On top of the plot based railroading, people then muddy in all these micro-railroads to coin a phrase of individual actions and dice rolls they think are shut down or made impossible. That seems to me to be a totally different thing and really ventures into the adversarial DM vs Player debate which is a whole different kettle of fish.

 

[Bedrockgames]

All DMs railroad. It's only a "bad" thing when players think that's what's happening because the internet told them so.

This simply isn't true. A railroad is when the players want to go in a particular direction and the GM tries to steer them back in the direction he or she had planned: it is forcing the players to go on a path, whether they want to veer away from it or not. It is entirely possible to let the players go in direction they want, improvise, use procedures, etc to adapt to their choices.

 

[pemerton]

The suggestion that because the chance of an encounter isn’t random, or has been picked by the DM it becomes railroading seems bizarre to me.

Who's suggesting that?

Whether or not a GM choosing an encounter is railroading would depend on, at least, the basis on which the encounter was chosen.

 

[TheSword]

It goes back to the quantum ogre discussion. It was the DM deciding your first encounter out of the town is with an ogre.

Whereas I see the DM putting encounters in your path just one part of balanced adventure writing. People wouldn’t complain if the first encounter out of town was a farmer heading to town to sell produce bearing news of the countryside. So I see little problem the first encounter being with an ogre.

I don’t see how a balanced encounter (I.e. it overwhelming force) can ever be railroading. Not unless repeated ad nauseam.

 

[iserith]

It goes back to the quantum ogre discussion. It was the DM deciding your first encounter out of the town is with an ogre.

Whereas I see the DM putting encounters in your path just one part of balanced adventure writing. People wouldn’t complain if the first encounter out of town was a farmer heading to town to sell produce bearing news of the countryside. So I see little problem the first encounter being with an ogre.

I don’t see how a balanced encounter (I.e. it overwhelming force) can ever be railroading. Not unless repeated ad nauseam.

Give me the ogre. It's worth XP.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I thought you had exited this conversation. If you're going to insist that I stop addressing you on the topic, have the same respect to not snipe from the sidelines when I'm discussing it with someone else.

That wasn't intended as a snipe, and notice he was responding to the discussion I was having with Iserith, which I at no point claimed I was stopping. Basically that statement had nothing at all to do with you.

 

[Thomas Shey]

It goes back to the quantum ogre discussion. It was the DM deciding your first encounter out of the town is with an ogre.

Whereas I see the DM putting encounters in your path just one part of balanced adventure writing. People wouldn’t complain if the first encounter out of town was a farmer heading to town to sell produce bearing news of the countryside. So I see little problem the first encounter being with an ogre.

I don’t see how a balanced encounter (I.e. it overwhelming force) can ever be railroading. Not unless repeated ad nauseam.

Well, I'll point out a fair number of hardcore sandbox proponents are also opposed to "balance" in encounter design.

 

[Urriak Uruk]

This simply isn't true. A railroad is when the players want to go in a particular direction and the GM tries to steer them back in the direction he or she had planned: it is forcing the players to go on a path, whether they want to veer away from it or not. It is entirely possible to let the players go in direction they want, improvise, use procedures, etc to adapt to their choices.

Question; let's say the PCs come to two doors. The DM's planned encounter is behind the left door.

The PCs take the right door... so the DM moves the encounter to behind the right door.

Is this railroading? I'd argue no, even though it is forcing a certain outcome to happen, and keeping with what the GM has planned. But the players still have choice, even if they don't know they're choices may be meaningless.