D&D General Why defend railroading?

[Bedrockgames]

So a haunted house is different to a monster just because?

Do you use a different random encounter table every time the players make a choice of direction?

Because if you don't the players choices are meaningless in regard to what they encounter.

Yes because it is a physical location.

No but it is based on terrain and region. And I do fit the result to the area and the context of what is going on. And the map is objective, so things aren't going to move around. Fortress of Doom isn't going to just show up int he south because that is the direction the players went. And the inhabitants of the fortress of doom will be more likely to be encountered in the area around fortress of doom.

And I am not saying there isn't gray here. Obviously random encounters are random. The choices leading to those are more about the preparation the players take, which type of terrain they choose to risk venturing into, etc. But if I am I am saying X is going to happen regardless, that is the railroad part of it. But even then a lot of my random entries do account for direction by being open (for instance saying: 1d10 disciples from the nearest sect HQ). So picking directions, even randomly will impact even a random encounter to a degree. Right now we are focused on the choice being about cardinal directions, but fundamentally this is about not giving weight to player choices and just having things happen because the GM decides.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Ok. By corrollary then, everytime you offer a players a choice of direction you must also use a different random encounter table.

Also just to address one other point about this: in an ideal world, just personal preference, I would do so. I would have things mapped out that granularly in terms of how my encounter charts are set up in order to make decisions even at the very microscopic level of the map, be meaningful. in reality that is not feasible for most GMs, and certainly not for me, so I simplify and try to get it down best I can so their choices are meaningful when they travel. My way of doing this is having different encounter TNs for different areas of the map, different encounter charts for different sections, and have entries rely on reference to location (so saying things like encounter with the most appropriate type of demonic creature, or encounters with officials from the nearest city, etc). It is simplified but it does attempt to make something like a choice of direction matter (or at the very least a choice to go into this particular set of woods matter). This is more about style than railroad but I did want to address this point in terms of what I like to actually do here

 

[Malmuria]

The players can presumably find the haunted house and decide not to enter it?).

This is the key decision point here in how sandbox-y the game is. Here's where I think the idea that everyone is "bought in" or following some kind of table social contract leads to a kind of railroading, because the players can identify that the house is the 'content' for that evening, and there's a social pressure to go along with it. I think people underestimate that forcing linear situations over and over again can lead to disengaged or at least somewhat passive players. This post describes the problem, albeit maybe in overly harsh terms.

Ironically, some of the worst GMs for this are those who honestly don’t want to run a railroad, but have no idea how to prep or run anything other than a railroad. They’ll say stuff like, “There’s a plot, but you’re free to do anything you want!” But because the plot is all they know how to prep, everywhere else the PCs go they just find blank walls and vast empty expanses of boringness. This still feels like punishment to the players. Worse yet, because the GM is trying to give them “freedom” to “do whatever they want,” he is no longer giving them the usual prompts and pressure to keep them on the rails, so these bad situations paradoxically become more common

 

[Cadence]

Because it is a location. And by making it come up no matter what direction they decide to go, even if their decision is effectively randomly choosing, it means it doesn't matter which direction they go: they will always encounter the haunted house. Also by letting the players pick a direction but then secretly deciding that direction always leads to X, you are creating the impression that the players have a choice, while they in fact do not. If I am in a game like that, and the GM isn't being transparent about this, and it becomes clear to me that my decisions about which direction we go never mattered, it is going to be bother me because I am going to feel like I am being railroaded.

I assume the players choice if direction has now put a haunted house on the map now.

How do you have the slightest clue you were railroaded if you knew nothing about a haunted house?

What if you chose that direction for one of six things (one for each hex side) and that thing is still in the direction you chose?

 

[Cadence]

Also just to address one other point about this: in an ideal world, just personal preference, I would do so. I would have things mapped out that granularly in terms of how my encounter charts are set up in order to make decisions even at the very microscopic level of the map, be meaningful. in reality that is not feasible for most GMs, and certainly not for me, so I simplify and try to get it down best I can so their choices are meaningful when they travel. My way of doing this is having different encounter TNs for different areas of the map, different encounter charts for different sections, and have entries rely on reference to location (so saying things like encounter with the most appropriate type of demonic creature, or encounters with officials from the nearest city, etc). It is simplified but it does attempt to make something like a choice of direction matter (or at the very least a choice to go into this particular set of woods matter). This is more about style than railroad but I did want to address this point in terms of what I like to actually do here

The first hex out is woods in every direction. Haunted house is on the woods no table. Do you automatically assume you were railroaded if you don't know a table exists?

 

[cmad1977]

Door A: underground creek and mushrooms
Door B: WOLVES!!

If the player take door A and the DM moves the Wolves, no railroad.

Door A: Ranger hears creek and detects a dampness in the air indicating possible underground growths.

Door B: Ranger hears growling and scrabblimg of claws on stone. A soft yipping indicates the presence of some sort of canine.

If the players take door A and the DM moves the wolves, railroad. More like a force feed than a railroad but I find our nerd nomenclature to be misused anyways.

 

[Don Durito]

Door A: underground creek and mushrooms
Door B: WOLVES!!

If the player take door A and the DM moves the Wolves, no railroad.

Door A: Ranger hears creek and detects a dampness in the air indicating possible underground growths.

Door B: Ranger hears growling and scrabblimg of claws on stone. A soft yipping indicates the presence of some sort of canine.

If the players take door A and the DM moves the wolves, railroad. More like a force feed than a railroad but I find our nerd nomenclature to be misused anyways.

If the players know that one of the doors has the creek and the mushrooms, but the GM decides that the first door they open will have the wolves regardless of which door they choose, that's the quantom ogre situation.

 

[Don Durito]

The first hex out is woods in every direction. Haunted house is on the woods no table. Do you automatically assume you were railroaded if you don't know a table exists?

It's worth quoting this from the original Quantom Ogre Post

"Palette Shifting

Let's take just one moment and talk about palette shifting. There is some misunderstanding of what is meant by this term.

A palette shift is when the players become aware of an encounter, and when making a choice to avoid that encounter, the DM re-skins (changes the 'color palette') the encounter and has them encounter it anyway.

This can be as simple as the bandit encounter (Bandits to the east - we go west! ack, bandits here too!), or as complex as totally different monsters who lead you to exactly the same place. This can be used to either negate the players choice (You're going to fight my special bandits anyway!) or to negate player freedom (It doesn't matter what you do, you will meet the cultists of Bane!).

Pre-scripting 12 encounter lairs, and randomly generating which is in a hex that was unknown is not palette shifting. Having undefined "white space" in a campaign, and dynamically filling it with pre-generated content later is not palette shifting."

 

[EzekielRaiden]

So a haunted house is different to a monster just because?

Been out of the thread for a bit, and you weren't talking to me. But my answer would be, "A haunted house is a location, and locations don't move, while creatures generally do." Now, I might invent a haunted house and place it in an area I expect the players to visit, but I see that as very different--that's populating a location before the players arrive. Yes, populating a location means me as DM inventing fiction to fill what was an empty unknown. I'm just dramatically less comfortable with "this location simply appears wherever the players decided to go" than I am with "once the players have decided to go somewhere, it needs to be a Something and not a Nothing." (Reading your most recent post, I'm deeply uncomfortable with palette shifting, but not with painting the background as I need it, so to speak.)

Do you use a different random encounter table every time the players make a choice of direction?

Only if the choice of direction is enough to be a difference. That is, if the party is still riding around in the Skull Woods, they can expect bandits, weird land anemones, spiders, animated skulls, flying jellyfish, etc. Choosing to go to the left while staying within Skull Woods is not, in this sense, different from choosing to go right. That does not mean that choosing to go right vs. choosing to go left has ZERO differences whatsoever, it just means that that choice is not one which applies to changing the random encounter table.

If, however, the fork in the road would send them to Skull Woods if they go left and Mt. Gulg if they go right, then that choice absolutely would (and should) change the random encounter table, because that IS a choice which applies to the things one would expect to find there. The dark and spooky forest should differ from the depths of caverns, if only because the food sources are quite different.

Because if you don't the players choices of direction are meaningless in regard to what they encounter.

See above. Some choices rationally should not have impact in certain senses, depending on context. That does not mean absolute invalidation of choice.

The problem with the teleporting haunted house (unless, I should note, it actually IS teleporting--which is perfectly fine if you establish it and empower the players to learn about it, whether or not they actually do so) is that it invalidates a choice that, rationally, should matter for this subject. A physical building should be accessed only down one path, unless time and effort cause you to come back around to having chosen the other. Presenting the choice of path to take necessarily implies a different destination, unless and until you justify that the choice shouldn't. (E.g., some roads that fork may only be going around an obstacle, and thus meet back up again once past the obstacle.) Presenting the choice of which path to walk while staying in Skull Woods does not necessarily imply a different ecology, in fact, it is generally understood to imply the opposite, that the ecology should stay the same.

And yes, this does make things at least a little bit subject to interpretation--as it should be. I don't believe there is, or should be, some utterly mechanical procedure for avoiding railroading, because that would be trying to solve the problem of being too formulaic with another formula. It has to be a judgment call, and it is quite possible for the DM to make a bad call. That's part of learning. But the overall heuristic remains effective and, barring the occasional exception, it is an effective pattern for avoiding railroading, particularly its worst excesses.

 

[Don Durito]

See above. Some choices rationally should not have impact in certain senses, depending on context. That does not mean absolute invalidation of choice.

Well yes. That was my whole point!