D&D General Why defend railroading?

[Don Durito]

It isn't even a lottery. That would at least give me a chance of not doing what the GM has planned. Instead this is "this is going to happen, no matter which direction the players go". Now that might be an informed choice or a shot in the dark (it depends on how the players are approaching making their decision about which direction to go). But I can say for sure, if my choices don't have any impact on whether the thing the GM has prepped happens or not, if I can't resist and go another direction, then I am in a railroad. Now you can argue that is still okay. But to say it isn't a railroad seems like a distortion of the term to me

As so often in these discussions it feels like you are assuming certain things to be the case here which haven't been explicitly stated.

 

[Asisreo]

I still don't believe railroading is a situation of Sandbox v. Linear game design.

A linear game defines the scope of area of the action. They can do whatever they want but there's nothing to see and not much to do other places. Its not entertaining to go to X city and do Y because there's no interesting conflicts in X city and no complications doing Y. This lets the DM ensure that the place they are having fun in is the place where the DM has concentrated his efforts into.

A sandbox is a game where the entire world has a more diluted sense of interest and while the cool stuff isn't condensed enough for an overall greater storytelling device, it allows the players to feel like they're encouraged to engage in activities that would lead them far off from a road.

So, in a nutshell. Sandboxes are off-road experiences, linear games are on-road experiences. Neither of which is necessarily railroading since the DM isn't forcing or punishing the players for their engagement techniques.

 

[Thomas Shey]

You need a concept of balance in order to intentionally unbalance things. A well-designed sandbox doesn’t just have completely random difficulty, it is consciously crafted to deliver a certain experience. The tools that are used to determine what a moderate difficulty encounter is for a party of any given level are the same tools you use to insure certain areas are easier or harder than the baseline.

I'd care to suggest that the vast majority of people I've seen talk about sandboxing are, at best, going by eyeballing. Certainly you're the first person I've seen who seems to be pro-sandbox who had anything good to say about balance evaluation tools.

 

[Thomas Shey]

It is a reference to its location not existing in definite sense until it is observed.

"Shroedinger's Ogre" would probably make the reference clearer.

 

[Thomas Shey]

To be clear, people think this sort of thing is what the Quantum Ogre situation is about, but it's not.

Well, like I've mentioned, the problem is there seems like some people consider informed and uninformed (blind) choices equivalent for railroading purposes, and I'm kind of hard-pressed to understand that.

I mean, you can argue some illusionism in the latter cases, but it doesn't seem like there's been any really meaningful decision making anyway.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

"Shroedinger's Ogre" would probably make the reference clearer.

I think that's what it was originally referred as years ago, but 'Quantum' is easier to type than 'Schrödinger.'

 

[Don Durito]

Well, like I've mentioned, the problem is there seems like some people consider informed and uninformed (blind) choices equivalent for railroading purposes, and I'm kind of hard-pressed to understand that.

I mean, you can argue some illusionism in the latter cases, but it doesn't seem like there's been any really meaningful decision making anyway.

The thing about the Quantom Ogre is that it is an informed choice. It's not that the players know about the ogre, but the information they have suggests that there is at least a chance they will encounter the thing they are looking for (which is not an Ogre).

So it's less about having a choice to not encounter an ogre and more about not having a choice that could lead to the encounter they actually want instead of the ogre.

Making the choice to play the odds is an informed choice, just like it's an informed choice to play Russian Roulette with a fully loaded gun vs one with only one bullet in the chamber.

 

[Thomas Shey]

The thing about the Quantom Ogre is that it is an informed choice. It's not that the players know about the ogre, but the information they have suggests that there is at least a chance they will encounter the thing they are looking for (which is not an Ogre).

So it's less about having a choice to not encounter an ogre and more about not having a choice that could lead to the encounter they actually want instead of the ogre.

Making the choice to play the odds is an informed choice, just like it's an informed choice to play Russian Roulette with a fully loaded gun vs one with only one bullet in the chamber.

Yeah, I commented in the earlier version of this that the "there's an ogre whichever path you take, but it makes a difference in other ways" seems functionally identical to "there are these different long destinations along these paths, but an ogre would be encountered on both of them" which shouldn't be objectionable on railroading grounds unless people are specifically trying to avoid ogres (and that should be a separate problem from which path).

 

[Don Durito]

I'd care to suggest that the vast majority of people I've seen talk about sandboxing are, at best, going by eyeballing. Certainly you're the first person I've seen who seems to be pro-sandbox who had anything good to say about balance evaluation tools.

I think there's a lot of ideological elements in discussions of sandboxes that obscure what's actually going on.

In your traditional Hex Crawl you will often have safer areas and more dangerous areas with different types of encounter tables and different elements of risk. And the dangerous areas are clearly signalled. eg "The haunted Forest". This is a kind of balance, just as making dungeon levels more dangerous as you go deeper is a kind of balance.

It's just that sandboxes (and old school dungeons) tend to balanced at the level of risk rather than individual encounters.

In this regard CR is actually useful in design environments, it's just that people before CR tended to just go by Hit Dice (and general knowledge). If there's an unavoidable beholder on the first level of a dungeon then something has clearly gone wrong.

Edit: CR in 3e actually seemed originally designed with stocking in mind (3e was 'back to the dungeon'), it's just that it came to be associated with the idea of the balanced encounter, as playstyles changed, so got pushback more on ideoligcal grounds.

 

[Bedrockgames]

You really don't need to mansplain to me what railroading is. I am and old timer like you and fully know what it means and I used it correctly in this context and it's precisely what I meant.



Gee thank you for the permission to run a railroading game for my 10 year old daughter playing her first game. I don't know what we would have done without your judgement deeming it acceptable.


This has nothing to do with the context I presented. I am sure you can reply to those posters just fine without the need to repeat your objection to their contexts to me for...reasons?

I wasn’t mansplaining and I wasn’t telling you what you can and can’t do with your daughter. Can we tone the hyperbole down a notch?